Rekindling
by unknownbyhim22
Summary: Peeta and Katniss have started their new lives after the Hunger Games and the fall of President Snow, but when Peeta gets the unsettling feeling that he is being followed home from the bakery, he has to wonder if the danger isn't over. Katniss and Peeta must protect their family, even if that means entering back into the violent world they left behind.
1. Chapter 1

**Hello, everyone! Wow, I don't think I've been on FF for two years or so, and I've missed it! I had to relearn how to do all of this since it's been so long. I've previously done all HSM stories, but after reading the Hunger Games series, I was on a total high from it and wrote this right after. I wrote this story about a year or so ago in two weeks. I don't know what took me so long to post it on here. This story is what I would do if I was writing the fourth book, so if you haven't read the books or seen the movie and would still like to, I would NOT read this. This story has direct references and all that to the first three books. **

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Rekindling

Part One (The Watchers)

Chapter One

Peeta appeared in the hallway after coming through the front door. Haymitch was sitting next to me on the couch, drinking some kind of dark liquid as the kids played on the rug in front of the fireplace. They looked up when Peeta stumbled into view and the ice in Haymitch's glass clanked against the sides as he sent me a wondering glance at the sight of my husband. A dark streak of blood was slashed across Peeta's forehead and he gestured for me before stepping back into the hallway, out of sight from the kids.

"Kids, Uncle Haymitch is going to watch you for a little while, so stay here," I said, getting up from the couch.

Haymitch started to protest, saying something about not wanting to be alone with our mini replicas. He stayed put on the couch, though, once I sent him what I knew was a deathly stare.

"Why's Dad bleeding?" Rosemarie asked, temporarily stopping her production on the wall she was building with her brother's toys.

"You know how clumsy Dad can be," I said, bending down to brush her hair out of her face before leaving the room.

Peeta was standing in our bathroom when I made my way into our bedroom, closing the door behind me. I knew the kids were far enough away from the room not to hear us, but even that didn't keep me from whispering as I found him. The water swirling around in the sink was red with blood and Peeta's attempt to stop his head from bleeding wasn't working.

Our eyes met when he looked up into the mirror and he instantly started to reassure me that it was nothing.

"You don't have to worry," he said, grabbing a towel from the counter and pressing it against his head.

"I wasn't going to," I said, grabbing his hand from the towel so that I could get a better look at it. His eyes scanned my face after I gathered bandages and antiseptic from under the sink and started cleaning him up. "What happened?"

As I disinfected the scrap on his head, he didn't answer. Even when I not so carefully pulled a piece of bark from his skin, he didn't say a word.

"You're not going to tell me? Can't be that embarrassing."

"I'm just trying to figure out what I saw," Peeta finally said, thanking me too as I taped a clean white piece of gauze on his forehead.

"Well, tell me first when you've figured it out."

I didn't need to stick around, since his head was no longer a problem. I figured Haymitch was probably near a panic attack by now, definitely if one of the kids expected him to entertain them. I passed our bed, going for the door when he said my name.

"Katniss," he said quickly, now in the room. I stopped at the door and looked at him, seeing the almost tortured look on his face.

"What's going on?" I asked, walking back to him.

He brushed my bangs to one side and trailed his hand until it rested on my neck, right where he could feel my pulse. My eyes narrowed at him, seeing the quick rise and fall of his chest.

"I think I was being followed," he explained.

On his evergreen t-shirt were bits and pieces of forest ground, which I started to pick off of him.

"Who'd be following you back home? You were coming from the bakery, weren't you?"

Peeta stopped my hand with his other as I went to brush off a leaf from his chest. He squeezed it slightly.

"Katniss…"

"Spit it out, Peeta. Haymitch is probably a wreck since I left him with the kids."

"This is going to sound crazy, but I think…"

"You think…" I waved my hand in the air, trying to speed him up.

"I think I was being followed by a Peacekeeper."

I pushed away from him then, making sure that his hand resting on my neck fell first. The room spun slightly as a million and one things circled in my head. I let out a slight laugh, maybe thinking he was trying to make me crazy.

"Not funny, Peeta."

"Katniss," he said sternly. "I am not joking. I saw the outfit. It's hard to miss since its stark white."

"There are no more Peacekeepers, Peeta. For the past fifteen years there hasn't been a capitol."

He sent me a pitiful glance, which I instantly resented. Bits of his blonde hair were stuck together with sweat and I suddenly had an urge to shake an explanation out of him. Scream at him until he told me what was going on.

"What do you know?" I asked.

"A few months ago, when Gale came to visit from two… he said that there might be a few former Capitol citizens wanting to get their old lives back. You know, like the riches and power. He said that maybe since we're the ones who fought the government, they could target us."

My hands clasped into fists and I could feel myself shaking with anger.

"You've been keeping this from me?" I asked, almost spewing the words.

"I didn't want to worry you if there wasn't something to worry about," he said, stepping closer to me.

"And now there is?" I pulled my arm away from his grasp when he reached for me and put my hand up, not wanting him to come any closer to me.

His silence was my answer and the key to open the floodgates to my wrath.

"You promised me that you wouldn't lie to me ever again, Peeta. You lied to me for the last time in the second Games."

"I haven't been lying, Katniss."

Peeta shook his head, clearly thinking he was in the right.

"You kept something from me," I said quickly, tightening my arms over my chest. "Same thing."

"Gale told me not to tell you anything until he knew for sure… but tonight reminded me."

I was suddenly mad at Gale too, hating him for taking my husband aside and giving him information that should have been given to the both of us the second he got a whiff of danger.

"This can only mean one thing," I said, feeling the vomit starting to come up my throat at the thought.

"What?"

"We're back in them. The Games. Aren't we?" I asked.

He looked at me like I was crazy, shaking his head again.

"Of course not! President Snow is gone, Katniss. The Capitol is collapsed. We're not in danger of being shoved into a fishbowl of an arena."

"We can't know that for sure. Not when there are Peacekeepers following you home from work."

"Katniss, calm down. Everything is going to be okay."

"Don't tell me to calm down!" I shouted.

Peeta cringed at the volume of my voice. I knew the kids had to have heard me and that Haymitch was now probably being bombarded with questions, so I covered my mouth with my hands.

"I'm going to call Gale tonight, okay?" Peeta said, not daring to try to comfort me by stepping closer. "I'll see if he's willing to come out tomorrow to talk with us. As a precaution."

"A precaution," I repeated, glaring at him. "You should have told me, Peeta. You should have told me so that I wasn't so caught off guard. You know I hate feeling so vulnerable."

"You don't have to feel vulnerable," Peeta said, taking the slightest step forward.

"Peeta!" I writhed, almost boiling over completely. I had to blink excessively to keep my emotions from pouring out in the form of tears. "We have kids."

He slowly sank down in a rocking chair that rested next to the bed, his eyes on mine. I knew he was thinking about all the times we stayed up rocking our kids in that chair.

"Everything is different now," I said, feeling my voice crack. "We can't go off and fight battles anymore, Peeta. We're as stuck as our parents were when we went off to fight in the Games."

"Don't compare us to our parents, Katniss. That makes…"

He trailed off at the idea of our kids being in the position we once were when we were younger. Although they weren't even old enough to be left alone, they were the only things we had… and they were our enemies' targets if what he was saying was true.

"I'm going to talk to Gale," Peeta told me again, as if that made so much of a difference.

"What's he going to do? He's been in two for years."

I couldn't look at Peeta anymore rocking in that chair. I turned for the door and didn't let the pleading sound in Peeta's voice stop me from leaving. I knew I wasn't being fair to him, being mad and all about him keeping this secret from me. I'd probably do the same thing if I had gotten the news from Gale, but there was so much more at stake if what he said was happening. I could lose everything if Peacekeepers were after us. If I lost my family, I lost everything that mattered… and there wouldn't be a thing left to live for.

At midnight, I wasn't sleeping, too wide awake with uncertainty to let sleep take me. Although, I knew that with the reminder of our past, I would have dreamed of the arena and President Snow, maybe even about my own kids' names being drawn from that crystal reaping bowl by Effie's pale hands.

I didn't tell Haymitch a thing when I came back from patching Peeta up. Haymitch didn't ask either, which further emphasized his desire to know nothing about anything at all. Haymitch was getting to the point in his life, old now and always drunk, where he knew he wasn't going to be around much longer. And I knew from my constant visits with him that he wanted nothing more than to drink his way to a better place, although he didn't believe in better places anymore. Not even after seeing the Capitol taken down and living a decade and a half in peace. I guess Haymitch was the only one being realistic about our world.

Embers in the dying fireplace twinkled in the heaping pile of ash and charred wood. I was sitting in one of the kitchen chairs, which I had dragged into the living room so that I could sit with the front door in view while keeping the bedroom doors and kitchen in my sight as well.

I knew behind one of those doors were Peeta and the kids. He fell asleep with our daughter Rosemarie and son Rye tucked under his arms, their heads resting in the crock of his arms. He had a good grip on the both of them when I checked on them last, which was only ten minutes earlier. Clearly, even though he didn't want me to worry, he himself was unsure about what laid ahead.

When I heard the squeak of a floorboard I instantly sat up, tugging on the string of my bow, which I had removed from my bedroom closet the second Haymitch left the house. My body was still as I held my breath, concentrating.

"Don't shoot," Peeta whispered, grinning the slightest.

I lowered the bow onto my lap when he was in full view and sat back against the chair, not looking at him.

"You're really guarding the house with that thing?" Peeta asked, walking slowly over to me.

He glanced at my grip on the bow and a slight flash of recognition washed over his face. After a second, the look passed and his arms loosened from their tight cross over his chest. I knew he hated seeing me with the bow now that we were so many years away from the Games, and even now he still had moments when he wasn't sure if I was good or bad, the person he knew or the person the Capitol once told him I was.

"Just a precaution," I said sarcastically.

He knelt down on the floor next to me and then swung his legs out in front of him, leaning back on his hands.

"You should be with the kids," I said.

"You should be in bed," he said back, just as quietly.

"I couldn't sleep," I told him, heavily blinking because even though I wasn't in bed, I was so tired I could barely open my eyes back up each time I blinked.

"Everything's going to be fine," Peeta said for the hundredth time since he told me there may or may not be Capitol people running around looking like Peacekeepers.

"You know just as well as I do, that you have no way of ever knowing that."

He didn't say anything, but placed one of his hands over my hand that was gripped on my bow. My hand loosened slightly at his touch and I looked down at him, feeling my strength, which I'm usually so good at keeping, evaporate. Peeta was the only person who ever saw me completely lose my cool, my strength, my sanity.

"I won't let anything happen to this family," Peeta said, looking me right in the eyes as he said it. "No one is going to touch them, Katniss."

I bent over and kissed him for a long drawn out minute, letting my hand that wasn't holding the bow and arrow run over his shoulder. My heart felt as if a trackerjacker had just sunk its stinger right in the center of it, puncturing and ripping it apart because even though I knew Peeta would protect me and our kids with his life, we could only protect them as long as we had information of what was coming. But now, as we kissed in our barely lit family room, we knew nothing about what tomorrow would bring.

Peeta stood after we pulled apart and slid his arm under my knees, lifting me up from the chair. I kept a hold on my bow and arrow, which I dangled next to me while my other arm went around his neck.

"Time for you and that bow to take a rest," Peeta said to me, kissing the side of my forehead.

"The kids…" I started.

"Will be there in the morning," Peeta said, carrying me to our room.

He lay next to me once he sat me down on my side of the bed and held me even though I wouldn't let go of the bow. He didn't keep telling me everything would be okay as I cried, burying my face against his soft t-shirt so that the rest of the world was blocked out. He simply kept telling me how much he loved me and that nothing in this world would ever change that.

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**Like it? Review!**

**Much love,**

**unknownbyhim22**


	2. Chapter 2

**Hello! Here's Chapter Two! I hope you're liking the story.**

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Rekindling

Chapter Two

Peeta was right about the kids still being there in the morning. I woke up to a pair of blue eyes peering down at me, brown hair tickling my face. Rosemarie's small hands were bunched around a handful of white fabric of our comforter and there was a bruise by her thumb where Rye bit her. I brushed my finger over her hand and smiled at her.

"Hi, Mom."

Even though she was seven and was calling me mom since her first word, I still felt surprised to hear her say it on occasion, and today the word caused my heart to soar.

"Good morning, Rosemarie."

"Uncle Gale is here," she told me, grinning obviously because Gale was one of her favorite people, even though she didn't see him often.

"What time is it?" I asked, sitting up so that I could see out the window above our bed to see the sun. The sun had an afternoon look to it, so I knew Peeta left me to sleep in.

"Lunch time. Dad made pizza."

"My favorite," I said, laughing when she did, as if keeping a secret.

"We know."

Rosemarie lay in bed, kicking her feet back and forth while I got dressed. I threw on a black t-shirt and a pair of brown pants and left my hair in a tight braid, just how it was almost everyday. Rosemarie insisted that I braided hers as well, so I parted her hair in three sections and braided it even more quickly than I could do my own. She reached behind her after and squeezed the braid in her hand, feeling how her hair was knotted together. She wiggled off of the bed and disappeared out of the room, expecting me to follow her.

When I got into the kitchen, Peeta had Rye tucked under his arm as he wiped down the kitchen countertops. Rye was slapping a piece of dough as big as a handheld compass in his hands, gnawing on it only to realize it didn't taste all that good raw. Rosemarie's screeches and giggles brought my attention to Gale who was tossing her up into the air over his head, only pausing to kiss her neck, tickling her.

"I'll take him," I said to Peeta, taking Rye once he handed him over. Peeta kissed me on the forehead and went back to cleaning up the kitchen without a word.

"Hey," I said to Gale when he set Rosemarie down so that he could greet me.

He hugged me as well as he could with Rye in my arms and pressed his cheek against my head.

"Nice to see you," Gale said, squeezing my braid the way Rosemarie did to her own as she sat on my bed earlier. He sat down in the kitchen chair pulled out next to him and I sat in the one to his left, pulling it out so I was facing him.

"How's District Two?" I asked, smiling only because Rye pressed the dough he was holding against my cheek, where it stuck. I peeled it off and handed it back over to him as Gale answered.

"Busy. We've been trying to perfect the trade route between the districts to prevent the chaos we've been encountering with the demand of everything."

"That must be keeping you on your toes," I said, shaking my leg that Rye sat on so that he bounced up and down.

"As well as anything else could," he answered, letting Rye latch onto his finger that he held out for him. "He's grown a lot since the last time I saw him."

"Peeta's been giving him too much dough to play with," I said, somewhat laughing. "He ends up eating it."

"Ah, he's going to be a fat one," Gale said, laughing when I threw the discarded piece of dough that Rye pressed on my cheek again at him.

"I ate dough when I was a kid and I turned out fine," Peeta said from the sink.

"So you think," Gale said, laughing again when Peeta hurled a heavy burlap bag of unopened rice at him from the opposite side of the kitchen. Even with age Peeta could still toss his weight around, and even Gale's reflexes were still sharp enough to catch the bag with ease.

"Not in the house, boys," I said, rolling my eyes.

"What happened to the fun Catnip?" Gale asked, plopping the rice on the kitchen table. "You would have loved throwing bags of rice around back in the day."

Peeta laughed slightly at the comment.

"Yeah, well, being a mom does that," I said coldly.

Gale caught the look in my eyes after my answer. How I knew what was going on behind the walls of this house. How I knew that we might not be as safe as we thought. I wasn't up for fun talk either. Our small talk was just coming to an end and he knew what I really wanted to discuss.

"Rosemarie, go play with your brother in the other room," I said to her, still looking at Gale. Rosemarie lugged her brother into the family room when I handed him over to her.

"She's a little angry we were talking without her," Peeta said to Gale once he sat down at the kitchen table, pushing a plate of pizza my way.

"Clearly," Gale said back.

"You can't be excluding me from information like that," I said to Gale. "I have every right to know if my family is in danger."

"I know," Gale said. "There's just not a lot of evidence supporting what we're thinking. I mean, if former Capitol citizens were really after you and Peeta because they wanted to take back their former glory, they would have done it by now. And it has to be such a small group since only extremists would want something so corrupt back."

"I feel so much better," I said sarcastically, hating him all over again.

"You two wouldn't be the only targets either. They'd be after everyone who worked to get President Snow killed. They'd be after me too."

"You don't have anyone, Gale," I said, mad that he didn't realize that there were two kids in the other room that could be hurt if someone came after Peeta or me.

Gale's face fell at my remark, but he regained composure after a few seconds.

I knew it wasn't right of me to call Gale out on his lack of a family since I was the one he would have wanted to live his life with had he not left to District 2. Peeta sent me a look that meant he didn't think my comment was fair. Since District 12 got torn apart after our second Games, Peeta and Gale had an unspoken brotherhood, or whatever they liked to call it. All I knew is that Gale was now Peeta's best friend and mine was basically Haymitch. I got the short end of the straw on that draw. Nowadays, Gale and I mostly argue.

"I think it would just be easier to face if we knew what to expect," Peeta said, budding into the conversation so that Gale wouldn't have to respond to my dig.

"I know what to expect as much as you do," Gale told him. "If I hear anything, you'll be the first to know obviously."

"Can't Paylor get a few people into District Twelve to keep a watch on things? It couldn't hurt, right?" Peeta asked, clearly hoping his brainstorming might start a team bonding moment. I took a bite of the pizza he made and let them talk it out.

"I already tried to get people over here, but Paylor thinks that it wouldn't be worth the man power… among other things."

"What other things?" Peeta asked.

"She thinks too many people have died for us in our lifetime. We've had our nine lives," I said, looking at Peeta, then at Gale.

Gale nodded, stealing a slice of pizza from my plate. I let him take it and watched him stuff half of it into his mouth in one bite.

"At this point we know nothing and therefore can do nothing," Gale said. "I'm sorry."

"Well, then for now we'll go on about living our lives," Peeta said confidently.

I could only look at him because I wasn't sure it would be so easy. I was just getting over the habit of constantly looking over my shoulder for hunting tributes and now I actually had something to watch out for.

"I wish I had more to say, but maybe we should take the lack of information as a good thing."

"I agree." Peeta nodded.

"Can you live with that?" Gale asked me, trying to read my expression, but I was doing a good job at hiding my emotions after a night of letting them run wild.

"I guess I have to," I said, standing up. "I think I hear Rye."

I heard nothing in reality, since Rye and Rosemarie were playing peacefully in the family room where I told Rosemarie to take her brother. I just didn't feel like being around Gale and Peeta right now. They had things to discuss, I'm sure, since they had gotten in the habit of doing the serious talking when I wasn't around. Sure enough, when I left the kitchen I heard their conversation start up and at first they talked normally, but I heard how their voices lowered as I played with the kids, just low enough so that I couldn't make out a single word.

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By the time Gale was set to leave, he had already given Rosemarie a dozen piggyback rides and gotten bit by Rye. Peeta was standing on the front step with the kids, listening to Rosemarie complain about the departure of her uncle. I was standing out in front of the row of victor houses with Gale, waiting for his car to arrive to pick him up to take him to the train station. Above us the sky was an orange and pink color and the air was cool as day turned into night.

"Sorry about the arm," I said to Gale, seeing the red mark the size of Rye's mouth etched in his skin.

"Well, at least he has a good protective instinct," Gale said with a chuckle, lifting his arm so he could see it.

"Just in case, right?"

I didn't mean to sound bitter about the situation at hand, but my words came out blameful and quick. Gale looked over at me, resting his arm back down at his side. He sighed and shook his head, kind of laughing to himself before saying anything to me. I squinted at him since the afternoon sun was right behind him, but even with my skewed sight, I could tell he was thinking about something set in the past.

"I should have expected this from you," he said.

"Why's that?"

"Because you've always been protective," he said, rocking back and forth on his feet.

"There's nothing wrong with that," I replied.

I expected him to understand my reasons for being so protective definitely since he saw what I went through with Prim, and since he was the same way with his siblings and mom.

"I'm not saying there is. I just have a feeling you're more upset with the fact that Peeta knew about the Capitol people before you. You've always wanted information first."

"Do you really think I want to hear something like this? That I really care who heard it first? I'd rather not have this as an issue," I said, feeling my eyes become wet with tears. "You don't think our life has been hell enough?"

I hated that after becoming a mother, I cried like a crazy person at any sign of upset. I pretended the sudden moisture was from the bright sun in my eyes and blinked a few times to get rid of any sign of pitiful emotion.

"I'm not looking to make you upset, Katniss," Gale said, looking somewhat guilty. "I thought I was looking out for you by just telling Peeta."

"Well, don't think that anymore," I said, shoving him lightly. "Always tell me what you know."

"Okay," Gale said, laughing softly. "First too?"

"Definitely first," I said with a grin since I knew that Gale was right about me preferring to hear things before Peeta.

"I'll call you with any updates," he said once the car pulled up to us, idling in its spot while the driver waited. "But don't wait around."

"I'll try to act normal," I told him, smiling when he seemed relieved.

He kissed me on the top of my head, giving me a tight squeeze before going to the car. Before the car pulled away, he rolled the window down and yelled goodbye to Peeta and the kids, who waved from the house. I left my spot and went back to the kids and Peeta when the car was no longer in view and when the sky was nearly black.

"Alright, guys, time for bed," Peeta said, standing up with Rye in his arms while Rosemarie grabbed his hand.

"Can you tell us a story, Dad?" Rosemarie asked.

"Which one do you want to hear?" Peeta asked as they walked into the kids' room. I leaned against the doorframe and watched as Peeta set Rye in his crib.

"The one where you saw mom for the first time," Rosemarie said.

"That's a good one," Peeta said as he helped Rosemarie into her pajamas.

She held onto his shoulders as she stepped into her cotton pants and once she was dressed, he scooped her up in his arms and laid her down in her bed. He knelt on the floor and leaned his elbows against the mattress so that she could see him. Rye whined in his crib because he wasn't ready for bed and I went and lifted him out as Peeta told Rosemarie her bedtime story. I sat down on the bed, leaning against the headboard as Rye rested his head on my shoulder. Rosemarie watched Peeta intently as he told her about his first day of school when his dad pointed me out.

Her eyes were heavy and barely open a few minutes later, but even then she wanted to hear another one, and just like every night, no matter how late it was and no matter how many times he insisted the first story would be the last one, he told her another one. And even when she fell asleep, he kept the story going, telling it to me just incase I had forgotten since the night before, that he has loved me everyday since the moment he saw me.

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**Like it? Review!**

**Much love,**

**unknownbyhim22**


	3. Chapter 3

**Here's Chapter Three! Be sure to review so I know if you're all liking it.**

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Rekindling

Chapter Three

Life went on as normal after Gale left, and while I went about my day still looking over my shoulder for any angry Capitol citizen, there was no sign of danger. At least not for a few weeks.

Peeta was gone working at the bakery, which he had rebuilt and started up again once we got settled into our life back in District 12 after the rebellion. He didn't need to work, really, since we could have sold any piece of furniture in our house and made money off of that, but he liked to keep busy. Bread made him happy, he always said. It was also the only thing he had left of his old life before we were in the Games, before his family was annihilated by the Capitol.

Whenever Peeta was gone at work, I made Haymitch visit with me and the kids. He protested every time, but I think he liked the fresh air he got when we all were outside, so he always showed up. Today he was sitting on my front step, drawing figure eights in the dirt with a stick. He mumbled under his breath as if having a conversation with himself after Rye clapped his hands in the dirt, ruining the picture. I couldn't help laughing when Haymitch told Rye to keep his hands off of his dirt.

I was kneeling behind Rosemarie, who was holding my bow and arrow, nearly tilting over under its weight. She liked to pretend she was actually shooting the arrow, but I pulled the bow back for her and let it send the arrow flying into the dirt. This is just another thing we did when Peeta wasn't around. I knew he wouldn't be happy seeing Rosemarie walking around with my bow and arrow.

After my last arrow was sent into the dirt, I left Rosemarie holding my bow to go pluck the arrows out of the ground to put back in my sheath. Haymitch was having a conversation with Rye, who like him babbled and slurred his words, so I was sure Haymitch came across as crystal clear to Rye.

Just as I was about to turn back to Rosemarie, I saw a white flash in the woods, the frame of a strongly built person moving behind the trees. In a blink of an eye, they were gone, but I still found myself running for Rosemarie, snatching her up as if she was that orange bag near the Cornucopia in my first Games. As if she was the one thing that would save my life. Haymitch looked alarmed when I sprinted toward him, plopping Rosemarie in his lap and pulling the bow from her hands.

"Haymitch! Take the kids inside," I shouted, shoving Rye in his arms as well.

"Kat—"

"Go, now, Haymitch! Now! Lock the doors."

I was sprinting toward the woods before he reassured me that he would and had my arrow pointing forward, ready. Leaves and thin branches slapped me in the face as I bounded into the woods, seeing yards in front of me a person running. I couldn't make them out well enough to shoot them. Even in white they were camouflaged in the dense forest. My lungs were burning as sticks cracked under my fast moving feet and I was suddenly aware of how long it had been since I ran full force.

Images of the Games came flooding back as I ran, hearing the heavy breathing of whoever I was running after. A few times, I wasn't even sure where I was or what I was doing. The images blended so well together that for a second I thought I heard the sound of a canon signaling the death of another tribute. When I snapped back into my reality, I realized that was just my pulse pounding in my ears.

The person in the white Peacekeeper outfit leaped over a fallen tree, but by the time I registered that I should jump as well and follow his lead, I was falling to the ground, rolling a few feet in the foliage covered ground. I had just enough time, though, right before I fell, to let the arrow fly from my bow and pierce him in the arm.

I heard him spewing with pain as I lay on the ground, but by the time I got up and was steady enough to run after him, he was no where to be seen. All I saw was the green of the trees and all I heard was the wind winding around the branches and the wings of birds leaving the scene.

"Damn it!"

The blood of the person who had been watching me and the kids near the house was splattered on the leaves around the log, but the blood trail stopped after a few more yards, leaving me nothing to follow. My heart was still going crazy and I couldn't catch my breath as anger swelled in my chest when I was finally able to realize what I had just done, and who I had let get away. I stayed in one spot for a few more minutes, hoping that whoever was running from me would come back around because they were lost, only to come face to face with me. When I heard and saw nothing near the end of the blood trail, I turned back around, keeping my bow and arrow ready so that if I saw anyone in white again, I'd send an arrow through their heart so they couldn't get away even if they wanted to.

Once I was at the edge of the woods, I saw our house from the view of whoever had been watching us. The victor house was huge, bigger than any near the center of District 12 and through the windows you could see the fancy curtains that draped the windows. I could have easily sunk my arrow into one of the front steps from the woods, and the idea of being a perfect target by being outside made my stomach flop.

I walked backwards to the front door, keeping my eyes on the woods and road in front of me to make sure no one followed. I pressed my back up against the front door when I got to it and turned my fist, knocking on the door. I still couldn't catch my breath after my full out sprint, fall, and failure, so I let myself sink against the door, hoping to regain some of my strength.

Through the door I heard footsteps, but no one opened the door and no one said a word. I turned and faced the door, seeing that the door was locked when I tried to open it. At least I knew that Haymitch had listened to me when I told him to lock the doors.

"Haymitch!" I shouted, hoping he'd open the door for me.

When the door remained shut, I started to panic. Maybe that wasn't him standing by the door? Maybe he hadn't gotten in the house in time?

"Haymitch! It's Katniss, open the door."

I knocked and turned the knob again, but he didn't open the door.

"Katniss!"

I heard Peeta behind me and knew that if I had been in the Games, I'd be dead because I didn't hear him until he said my name. He was out of breath and grabbed my arms to steer me to look at him directly.

"What's going on?" he asked, his eyes filled with anger and fright all at the same time.

"They were watching us, Peeta," I said numbly, trying to swallow, but since my throat was dry from running, I couldn't.

"Who?" he asked, shaking me so that I'd answer quicker.

"The Peacekeepers, or whoever the hell they are!" I shouted.

"Oh my…"

Peeta let go of me and pounded on the front door, shouting to Haymitch to open it before he knocked it down and killed him with his bare hands. Haymitch opened it then, peeking through the slight crack he made and letting us in when he saw us both standing there. Peeta closed the door behind us and locked it, pulling me by the hand until we were in our room and alone. I didn't see the kids when we came in, but as Peeta hurried me into our bathroom, I didn't have time to think of them.

"Why are you bleeding?" he asked me, harshly pulling out the bandages and disinfectant from under the sink.

"I went after the guy," I said, wincing when he dabbed a cotton ball on the scratches across my forehead.

"Katniss," he said with a shake of his head. "You shouldn't have gone after him."

"Why the hell not?" I asked, mad at him for thinking it would be better to stay cooped up in the house waiting for someone else to make the first move.

"What would I have told Rosemarie if you didn't come back?" he shouted, angry.

"I would have," I said back, feeling the cool sensation of the disinfectant on my forehead drying after he tossed away the cotton balls.

I could see the angry tense of his back, and even as the first aid kit flew across the bathroom, denting the wall, I kept my eyes on him. He was as out of breath as I was when I had stopped in the woods after running, but I knew his anger was the thing working him up.

"Peeta…" I started.

"Don't," he said, shaking his head.

He leaned against the bathroom counter, looking at the first aid kit he had destroyed by hurling it. I set my bow and arrow on the counter and took a few steps toward him, stopping when he looked up at me after seeing enough of the first aid kit.

"You didn't know if you would be back," Peeta told me.

He hated when I thought I was invincible and when my stubbornness got in the way of seeing reality. I nodded because I didn't know how to respond without making him angrier. He rubbed his face with his hands, looking even more stressed when his face came up from under them.

"I need to see the kids," he said, pushing off of the bathroom counter.

I followed him as he made his way back to the family room where Haymitch was sitting alone. He looked at us as if we were in his house, coming for a visit.

"Uh… Haymitch, where are the kids?"

He shrugged, not saying a word, and Peeta just about threw the chair next to him across the room at Haymitch.

"Closet," Haymitch said when Peeta threatened his life again.

There were about seven closets total in our house, so his clue wasn't exactly helpful. When I sent him a pleading look for Peeta's sake, he pursed his lips together and whistles a bone chilling tune. Rue's song came from his lips and he kept his eyes trained right on me until the kids appeared in the room. Rosemarie was holding onto Rye and the both of them looked happier than ever.

"Uncle Haymitch was playing hide and go seek with us," Rosemarie said, smiling cluelessly. "We had to come out when he whistled if he couldn't find us."

Peeta sat in the chair he would have thrown at Haymitch if the kids hadn't appeared because I'm sure his legs felt like jelly underneath him. I took Rye from Rosemarie and she skipped over to Haymitch, plopping down next to him as if they were the best of friends.

"I think I need a drink," Haymitch said then, patting Rosemarie on the head before he got up. "See you tomorrow."

Haymitch wasn't one to stick around for thank-yous and conversations of what to do in tragedies. He had too many of those in his lifetime, so he opted out on serious situations. I knew he had a feeling that something was going on; otherwise he wouldn't have taken the kids inside. He sent me a look before he disappeared out of view and I heard him lock the front door behind him, leaving us alone.

We couldn't say much about what I saw when Peeta was gone since the kids were around, so we waited it out. Dinner was a blur. I don't even remember what we ate, and the house was so quiet that when Rye or Rosemarie would say something after a few minutes of silence, I'd jump. Peeta was still walking around angry. At me, I'm not sure, but probably more about the fact that people were actually watching us.

By the time we were able to talk, the kids had fallen asleep on the couch in the family room and we were sitting in front of the fireplace. Neither of us wanted to move the kids to their room since we didn't want them to leave our sights, so we had to whisper when we talked.

"Do you think Haymitch knows anything about what's going on?" Peeta asked, tossing a log onto the fire, pulling his hand away quick enough so that the sparks didn't touch his skin.

I shrugged, leaning my chin on my knees, which were pulled up to my chest.

"He might have suspicions, but he doesn't want to know," I replied.

"Did you get a good look at the Peacekeeper impersonator?"

"No," I said, feeling the same anger swirl inside of me that I felt when I let him get away. "It was a man. That's all I could tell when I was running after him."

"But you hit him?"

"Just in the arm. Nothing fatal."

"He'll be hurting, though, so that's all that matters."

I didn't say anything, because I knew that we would have been better off had I killed him. Peeta and I got hurt during the Games and we were healed and able to go on with our lives. Nothing is final until you're dead. We knew that more than anyone.

Peeta stared at the fire and I could see the flickering flames reflect back in his eyes. His demeanor was so much different from this morning, when he woke up optimistic about the day. Now, he looked stressed and angry and tired. Dark circles were starting to form under his eyes, making him seem like he aged years in the past few hours.

"What are you thinking?" I asked when it had been a while since either of us said anything. He looked over at me, but looked at the fire when he answered.

"I think my world is slipping through my fingers," Peeta answered.

I let his answer sink in for a few seconds.

"Kind of like your name just got pulled out of the reaping bowl again?"

He nodded and turned to look at me. I scooted closer to him so that my back was to the fire. His back was to the kids, so we were face to face and he rested his hand against the rug, his arm a tent over my legs.

"Except it feels worse now," Peeta explained.

"We have more to lose," I whispered.

"Who would have imagined?" Peeta asked, a glint of reminiscing in his eyes. "That me and you would have had more to lose than we did before the first Games."

"You did," I said, smiling a little. "You always told me we'd end up here."

"Not here exactly."

"Well… with the kids, the house, the married life."

"The danger," Peeta added.

He sounded like I had the night he came home after being followed by the person in the Peacekeeper uniform. I knew it was my turn to reassure him, even though I didn't believe myself that everything would be okay.

"Where would we be today if we hadn't lived dangerously?" I asked him.

"What?" he whispered, laughing slightly.

"We never would have fallen in love. Or gotten married. Or had these completely oblivious kids."

"You don't think I would have found a way to get you to notice me?" Peeta asked, forgetting for a few seconds about what we were facing. Since I needed him to be okay, I didn't try to steer the conversation back to the people watching us.

"Hell no," I said, pressing my face against his shoulder so that my laugh wouldn't wake up the kids. His breath tickled my ear when he laughed with me. "It took you almost dying and then forgetting who I was for me to notice you."

"Clearly I've done most of the work in this relationship," he joked, brushing my bangs out of my face when I sat up again.

"You?" I repeated in disbelief. "I had to be completely irresistible. That's hard work."

"Yeah, I bet," Peeta said with a shake of his head.

He had the slightest blush on his cheeks as I grinned back at him and I knew from the look in his eyes that he was remembering something from the past; something good that had nothing to do with the Games or President Snow or danger.

"I love you," I whispered to him, leaning forward so that our noses almost touched.

"I love you too, Katniss," he said back. "More than anything."

I kissed him then because I knew he was telling the truth, and because I knew that as long as we loved each other and let no one get in the way of that, we'd be okay. Even if our lives ended tomorrow, we had hundred of days behind us when we were living happily in peace and happily together.

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**unknownbyhim22**


	4. Chapter 4

**Here's Chapter Four! Let me know what you think.**

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Rekindling

Chapter Four

When I woke up, I was facing the fireplace, which looked grey and dull with no fire blazing inside of it. The rug pressed against my cheek and when I lifted my head, I could feel the indents it left in my skin when I brushed my hand against it. I didn't feel Peeta next to me, where he had been when I fell asleep, but when I turned he was on the couch, watching me from his spot on the couch. The kids were still sleeping because it was still early morning and I realized the only reason why I was up was because of the thunder coming from outside.

"Have you slept?" I whispered from across the room.

When he shook his head I sent him a disapproving look because he wouldn't be able to help anyone if he was exhausted. I stood up from the rug and sat down in a chair across from the couch.

"You should sleep," I said, seeing a flash of lightening just beyond him through the windows lining the family room. I knew the thunder was coming, so I didn't flinch when it roared overhead.

"I'll sleep when I'm dead," he said, resting his head on the back of the couch.

I shot him a look at his choice of words.

"Sorry," he mumbled.

The phone rang then, just before I could say anything else to Peeta about getting some sleep. The ring was just enough to wake up the kids, who opened their eyes and appeared to have an instant supply of energy. When I got up to grab the phone, I saw the slightest expression cross Peeta's face as Rosemarie said something about Cinnamon Roll Sunday, like maybe he wished he had gotten at least an hour of sleep. I grabbed the phone off of the kitchen wall, but stretched the cord that attached it to its mount so that I was standing in the family room, my eyes on the kids.

"Hello?"

"Katniss, its Gale."

Unlike most times he called, goose bumps appeared suddenly on my arms. There was no sign of distress or worry in his voice, but the last time he was here, he said he'd call if he got any news on the former Capitol citizens. He hadn't called since so I had a feeling I was about to hear something I didn't like.

"Did you hear about what happened last night?" I asked him.

"Peeta called a few hours ago."

I glanced at Peeta from across the room, who was trying his best to seem happy around the kids as they climb all over him while he sat on the couch.

"What's the news?"

"I'm not sure you'll believe me."

"I'll believe just about anything right now."

"Well… I got word from Effie this morning."

Except maybe that. Effie died a few years ago after she went off of her scheduled routine and got hit by a car. She always said that unscheduled days were dangers, and after hearing about her death years ago, I figured she was right.

"She's dead," I said, creasing my forehead in confusion. "She got hit by a car, right? She left Haymitch, of all people, her wigs."

Even under the circumstances, Gale had to laugh. He always said he had a hard time picturing Haymitch opening the box with a hand written note from Effie's attorney to find her hair pieces.

"It was her," Gale said back. "And she could tell me everything we need to know about the people watching you."

"Hold on, Gale," I said, shaking my head at myself because I couldn't understand what he was saying. "How did you even know it was her?"

"I quizzed her. Asked her questions I knew only she could know."

"Like what? What did you ask her?" I asked.

"I asked her what hair color she had during your first Games," Gale said.

"Anyone could have guessed that. It was broadcasted on live TV."

"So I asked her a few other things," Gale said, sounding as if he didn't want to get into a thorough conversation about the questions he asked her. "But that's not what's important. That's not why I called."

"Tell me what she said."

I still couldn't believe that Effie was alive and well because I had seen her wigs in Haymitch's house, lined up in a row so that Haymitch could knock them off his upstairs banister with his empty beer bottles. I let Gale go on though, because at least we were getting some kind of information, even if it wasn't true.

"She staged her death," Gale said simply, pausing because he knew I would protest, which I did.

"This isn't true. Effie doesn't stage deaths. Why would she, anyway?"

Peeta looked over at me as he and the kids made their way to the kitchen. I let the cord of the phone slack slightly, but stayed in the family room because I didn't want my family to see me as Gale told me what was going on.

"To protect you," Gale said. "She staged her death when she got wind of a small group of Capitol people wanting to take revenge out on you for taking their good lives away from them."

I got chills hearing him confirm the suspicions we had about people going after us.

"Why though? No one would have come after her because of us. She could have let them kill us and pretended not to know a thing to ensure she wouldn't get hurt."

"She said she felt that she owed it to you after you made sure she wasn't killed when the rebellion happened," Gale explained. "Since she herself was from the Capitol, she knew she could get the people who are after you to trust her. She's been compiling evidence ever since."

"And what does she know?" I asked.

I heard him take a deep breath and let it out before saying anything. It was what he always did before he was about to drop unpleasant news.

"I don't know how to tell you this."

"I can handle it," I said, although I wasn't sure that I could.

I was almost tempted to call Peeta in to hear the news himself, but then saw him helping the kids make cinnamon rolls when I peeked into the kitchen, so refrained from dragging him to the phone. Then, before Gale said anything, I had a feeling Peeta already knew.

"If you don't do something yourself soon, there won't be anything left of you within the week. They've been finalizing their plans for you."

I didn't say anything, instead just listened to Gale breathing on the other end of the phone. He didn't say anything either, because I guessed he knew I was taking it all in. What was I supposed to say to him, then? Would it be a waste to sink to the floor and curl up in a heap, plugging my ears like Annie would when she remembered something from her Games during the rebellion?

"Gale…"

"Look, Katniss, I'm trying to get Paylor to do something for you. I'm on the train there, actually, but you have to… I don't know, come up with a plan."

"To do what?"

I wasn't sure what Gale was suggesting. Did he really think that Peeta and I would dress up in our black and red District 12 uniforms from the Games and sneak around our town waving weapons around? We'd be killed just by our neighbors when they saw us coming.

"You have to kill them first," Gale said.

"No," I said, shaking my head as if he were right in front of me and I was communicating face to face with him. "Peeta and I… we don't do this stuff anymore."

"Fine," Gale said, mad almost. "Then you die doing nothing. Rye and Rosemarie too."

"We don't even know who we're looking for!" I said, sounding just as mad back. "Where do we go to hunt these alleged Capitol people? What do we do after we kill them? Go to prison for murder?"

"Paylor would pardon you," Gale said. "Even if she doesn't want to bring any of her men to keep you safe, she wants angry Capitol people around just as much as you do. You'd be doing her a favor by killing them."

"Where would we even find these people, Gale? I don't know who they are!"

"When I meet with Paylor, I'll send you the information about the people who are after you. Effie has a very organized list about these people… she has every hideout they'd ever occupied located on a map."

"Are they close, Gale? To the house, I mean."

"No. They're just past District Twelve's boundaries."

Even though everything I'd just heard was bad news, I felt the slightest bit of relief at the fact that there weren't people camped out in the woods in our front yard, watching the house as we slept.

"I'll call you again later, Katniss, but for right now I have to go."

"If you hear anything else, please call right away."

"I will," Gale said, his voice wavering a little bit. "And, Katniss?"

"Yeah?"

"Maybe you should talk to Haymitch."

"Why?" I asked, wondering why Gale thought it was necessary for someone else to know about what was going on. The fewer people who knew about what was happening, the better, I thought.

"Because he's done a good job at keeping you alive in the past."

I cleared my throat as a response, not sure what else to do. His words stung and caused my heart to beat even faster than it already was. Gale thought we were going to die, and if he thought so, the chances were, he was probably right.

"Bye, Catnip," he said, and he hung up the phone, letting the buzz of the disconnected line ring in my ear.

I listened to the buzz of the phone in my ear for a while, standing in the family room while I watched the rain pelt the windows from outside. I don't know how long I was standing there for, but only snapped out of it when I felt a pair of arms wrap around my legs. Rosemarie was staring up at me, a smear of flour stretched across her left cheek.

"Mama, breakfast is ready," she said, giving my legs another tight squeeze.

I picked her up and set the phone back on its spot in the kitchen. There were four plates, each with their own cinnamon roll, set at the kitchen table. Peeta raised his eyebrows at me when I sat down at the table after setting Rosemarie in the chair next to me. He was holding Rye in his lap.

"What did he say?" Peeta asked me, watching as I took a bit of the roll.

"Nothing you don't already know," I said, looking over at him.

When he didn't deny knowing about what was going on, I knew that he had been up all night, figuring out everything with Gale, telling him to see Paylor, wondering if Haymitch could get us out of this. The bags under his eyes and the look of pure disbelief on his face told me that he, like myself, had no idea what the hell we were going to do.

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	5. Chapter 5

**Hello, everyone! This is the last chapter before Part Two. Let me know what you think.**

* * *

Rekindling

Chapter Five

Since Peeta and I needed to talk about what was going on, we called Greasy Sae over to watch the kids for us. She was so old that I'm sure people would believe she was older than District 12 itself, but she raised enough kids and grandkids to know what she was doing with ours. For lunch she made the kids some kind of beefy stew, and by the time Peeta and I were ready to come up with our plan, they were knocked out on the couch as Greasy Sae began knitting what looked like the start of a scarf.

Peeta and I were sitting in the office since it seemed like a good place to come up with a game plan. I didn't like the room necessarily, since it still reminded me of President Snow's visit after the first Games, but dealt with it.

We had just went over everything we knew about what was going on in the outside world, jotting down on paper what Gale had told us so far. Peeta was sitting in the office chair that was just behind the desk and I sat on the opposite side, leaning against the desk to see what he wrote on paper.

"Now we just have to figure out what to do next, if anything," I said to Peeta once we were out of things to put down on paper.

"We have to do something, there's really no choice," Peeta said. "We're just finishing what we started so that Rye and Rosemarie won't ever have to."

"I thought this was over," I confessed to Peeta.

"I know. Me too."

We stared down at the paper for a little bit, just listening to the rain that hadn't let up since the morning. Peeta kept uncapping and capping the pen in his hand, which created a constant snapping rhythm.

"I guess we should figure out when we're going after them, right?" I asked Peeta, wanting to start from the smallest detail and work our way to the complicated stuff.

He nodded, his nervous habit with the pen cap stopping.

"Tonight's going to have to be when we go," Peeta said. "I mean, tomorrow we could wake up with the house surrounded for all we know."

"But you haven't slept. You look exhausted."

"It wouldn't be the first time I went off to fight with no sleep," Peeta said back, remembering the nights we stayed up before our Games.

"Okay, but we have nothing to take with us out there, no safe place to take the kids…"

"I honestly think we have to get Haymitch involved, Katniss. He's always been around when we went off to do these things," he said. "I don't even know where to begin without him."

"I know," I said with a nod, agreeing with him that Haymitch could probably help us out a lot. "I hate to burden him with this, though."

"Well, I'm being selfish," Peeta said, shrugging. "I don't care about burdening him."

"We should go over there now, if tonight's when we're leaving," I said.

Peeta nodded and hooked the pen he had been holding onto the edge of the legal pad he had been writing on. After a quick explanation to Greasy Sae about having to leave, we were at Haymitch's front door. The typical stench that wafted out of Haymitch's house greeted us when he opened the door, and when he saw the two of us standing on his porch he instantly started to protest.

"I'm not involved," he said, shaking his head. "Don't know a thing. Don't want to know a thing. Don't need to know a thing."

"Haymitch, you're our only hope," I said,

"Now, don't you go saying stuff like that, sweetheart," he said, clearly taken aback by my desperate attempt to get his help.

"We know you don't want to know anything, and we promise not to give you the details, but we need your help anyway," Peeta explained.

"I'm no good at this stuff anymore, kids," Haymitch replied. "It's been too long."

"Protective instincts never go away, Haymitch," I told him. "You know that."

Haymitch looked at me, stared me right in the eyes. I could tell he was wishing I would take that as a no, but Peeta and I remained on the front porch anyway. He opened the front door wider and gestured for us to come in. Haymitch's terrible upkeep of his house was no surprise to either Peeta or me, but the TV that was broadcasting the latest news about the world did. Haymitch didn't watch TV anymore and I thought he had thrown all of his TVs out in the trash a few years ago. This TV looked new.

"Is whatever you're about to get involved in dangerous?" Haymitch asked once we were in the kitchen. He poured himself a glass of dark liquor and took a long chug.

"Yes," Peeta said.

"And when is this going to go down?"

"Tonight," I said.

Haymitch looked at the two of us over the rim of his glass and shook his head. It was obvious that he thought we were both getting crazier with age. He refilled his glass and then started to make his way out of the kitchen. We followed him without saying anything and glanced at each other when he opened his basement door, flicked the light on and sloppily made his way down the stairs.

Peeta and I stood at the bottom of the stairs as Haymitch went toward a hanging string that was coming from the ceiling. When he pulled it, the rest of the lights in the basement turned on, one light at a time until the very last one at the furthest spot in the basement was lit. The grey walls and stainless steel and metal equipment knocked the air right out of me as I took it all in. The cement floor underneath me was the same color of the walls, making me feel incapable of getting away from the memory triggering surroundings.

"Haymitch…" I started, looking around the basement.

Since I still couldn't comprehend why I was looking at an almost exact replica of the Games training center, I couldn't finish my sentence. Peeta shifted uncomfortably next to me, and when Haymitch told us to follow him, I linked my arm around Peeta's for support.

"Like I said, I don't want to know a thing," Haymitch said as he led us to a rack of different weapons. "But take what you want."

"Why do you have this here?" I finally asked Haymitch.

Haymitch looked over at me, but didn't answer, instead just leaned up against the basement wall, waiting for us to do something. I knew that Haymitch wasn't someone who trusted anyone easily, but that hardly explained the obstacle course in his basement. If he really thought that we'd never actually be safe, even with the new government in place, he would have had Peeta and I training here everyday, but he hadn't.

"Katniss, I uh, I gotta go," Peeta said to me, releasing his arm from my grip and backing away.

His eyes were squinted in that look of confusion, which he always got when he wasn't sure what his reality was, so I let him back away. Before he turned for the basement stairs, I saw him gripping at his forehead, mumbling to himself something I could only guess was about me. Haymitch bit at his fingernails until he heard Peeta leave the house through the front door upstairs.

"You better get going," he said, gesturing toward the rack.

He grabbed two backpacks from the wall a few feet away and set them by my feet while I tried to focus on the wall of weapons I could use to potentially kill again.

"I guess I should take the bow and arrows," I said out loud, stepping forward and removing them from their hooks on the wall.

"That would be the best for you," Haymitch said.

Even though he didn't want to know anything, I could tell he was already going into mentor mode. He eyed a club on the rack, which I took as a hint to take it, so I did. Along with that, I took a few knives, and night goggles, since we'd be going out once it got dark. After taking the few weapons, I turned and stared at the rest of the basement, feeling chills race across my skin once I saw the cardboard cutouts shaped as people with targets right over their hearts.

"I just don't understand this, Haymitch," I said to him again, wanting an explanation.

"We can't trust anyone, Katniss," Haymitch said simply. "Except maybe each other."

I took that as a confirmation of what I had been thinking about Haymitch still not believing he was safe under the new government. I knew what it was like to worry everyday about dangers, but Haymitch was in such a different state of mind. He was literally driving himself crazy conjuring up all the possible scenarios where someone could go after him again.

When we made our way back upstairs, Haymitch didn't offer to carry anything I had taken from the basement. I was almost crushed under the weight of the backpacks and weapons, but I guessed he wanted me to get used to it.

"What are your plans for the kids tonight?" Haymitch asked, avoiding my eye contact as I stood on his front porch.

I could tell he didn't want to come across as concerned, but even as he tried to hide his face in his glass of alcohol, I saw the slightest bit of worry.

"We don't know yet," I answered. "Maybe Greasy Sae can take them."

"No," Haymitch said with a shake of his head. "They'll know to go to her house first."

"They?" I asked, my eyes widening in hopes that he knew what was going on.

Haymitch waved me off, shaking his head.

"Whoever you and Peeta are afraid of, they'll know who's been coming in and out of your house," Haymitch said.

"Do you know…"

"I don't want to know!" Haymitch said quickly. "That's just one of my scenarios."

"Would you watch them?" I asked him, thinking that maybe keeping the kids home would be a good thing so that they wouldn't have anything to be worried about.

Haymitch hesitated, looking down at the last sip of liquor that swirled around in his glass. Maybe it was stupid of me to trust someone who was normally drunk to take care of my kids, but with the night coming, there weren't a lot of people to ask.

"Let me know when you're leaving," Haymitch said, his way of agreeing.

I nodded, thanked him, and turned to go back home. Greasy Sae was still on the couch knitting when I went inside and I was glad that the kids were sleeping so that they wouldn't sense something was going on. I set everything we got from Haymitch in our bedroom so that it wasn't out in the open, and stepped back out into the hallway. Greasy Sae had only raised her eyebrows when she saw the supplies I was carrying. She, like Haymitch, wouldn't want to know. Peeta whispered my name after he poked his head out of the office and I made my way to him.

"Gale's sending the information," Peeta said, shutting the office door behind me once I was in the room.

My heartbeat quickened at the sound of the papers being printed out across the room. In a matter of seconds, we'd see the names and faces of the people who wanted us dead. I could hear Peeta's quickened breathing next to me, and I'm sure I sounded the same, because whatever it was that we were about to start, would begin the second we saw those papers.

At first, when the papers spewed out of the fax machine, picture side up, I didn't believe what I saw. Effie had gotten everything wrong with the list of people after us and Gale had foolishly believed her. There was just no way that the person I saw in the first picture on the first page wanted me and Peeta dead. Peeta seemed surprised too, because he took the paper from my hand after I took the stack from the printer and pulled it up closer to his face.

The face staring up at us from the paper in his hand was Caesar Flickerman's.

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**unknownbyhim22**


	6. Chapter 6

**Here is Part Two! Be sure to review. I forget to update when I don't get little reminders in my inbox! Enjoy.**

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Rekindling

Part Two (The Arsonist)

Chapter Six

Our bedroom was completely silent as Peeta and I got dressed to do whatever the hell it was that we were going out to do. The bathroom mirrors were foggy from the steam of the shower. When I told Peeta it probably wasn't necessary to take a shower, he replied with something along the lines of wanting to be clean when he died. Since his comment, I hadn't said anything else to him. I was standing in front of my dresser, fishing around my sock drawer for a belt to wear around my pants. The backpacks Haymitch had given us had water and fire repellent clothing in it, which we were getting dressed in.

It felt like time was moving incredibly fast as I slid my belt through the belt loops of my pants. I was trying to go slow, wanting to take forever getting ready so that we wouldn't have to leave. When I glanced up and over my shoulder at Peeta, he was just looking over at me from his spot across the room. He pulled a clean cotton t-shirt on over his head, opting out on the t-shirt that was provided by Haymitch. Apparently, he wanted to be comfortable on our journey too.

He was zipping up the black and red jacket given to him when he finally said something.

"I hate to say it under the circumstances, but you look crazy sexy getting ready for battle," Peeta said to me, coming over and zipping up my jacket as well.

"Well, enjoy it while it lasts," I said, half smiling when he looked up at me.

He leaned forward and kissed my forehead, going back to his nightstand after. I kept my eyes on him as I brushed and braided my hair.

"You know what makes this even worse?" Peeta asked me after I was done doing my hair.

"That Caesar Flickerman is behind it?" I guessed, going over and sitting down next to him on the edge of the bed.

"I'll believe he's behind it when I see him," Peeta replied, shaking his head at the idea. I knew how he was feeling, I didn't believe it either. I nodded my head for him to continue.

"What makes it worse?" I asked.

"That we have no idea what we are doing," Peeta answered. "In the Games we knew to find water and hide, but now… this could take an hour for all we know."

"I hope it takes an hour," I said, although I was doubtful. "At least it'd be over."

Peeta ran his hands through his hair, squeezing his forehead in frustration. I brushed my hand over his back, rubbing his shoulder.

"I just don't believe that _Caesar Flickerman_ has the guts, do you?" Peeta asked me.

"If you asked me yesterday, my answer would have been no, but you saw the papers," I replied.

"Let's hope Effie is wrong," he said. "I don't want to be the one to kill him."

His words caused tears to spring to my eyes. Everything in this moment, right here as the sky grew dark outside, made what we were about to do so real. We were going to be back on the hunt, killing anyone who even remotely seemed like a threat. Peeta told me that I was crazy that night I found out about the Peacekeepers, when I said we were back in the Games, but I knew that we were. The fire that we had started with the berries was starting up again, rekindling after everyone thought it was doused with water.

We sat staring at the wood floor of our bedroom until we knew we had to leave. Peeta reached into the drawer of his nightstand after we stood up from our bed and fished something out of it. He threw whatever it was over to me and I caught it when I saw it catch a ray of light as it soared through the air. When I opened my hand to see what it was, I was staring down at my mockingjay pin.

"I thought I got rid of this," I said, flipping it over in my hand a few times.

"You tried," Peeta said, stepping toward our bedroom door. "Come on."

At the moment, Rosemarie and Rye were doing a good job at keeping themselves entertained. Haymitch was pacing from one end of the family room to another, and when he saw us, he looked away, focusing on the floor. Peeta set our backpacks by the front door while I knelt down next to Rosemarie.

"Why are you dressed like that?" Rosemarie asked me, poking at my confining jacket. She was used to seeing me in my evergreen pants and black t-shirts.

I grabbed her hand and brushed my thumb over her soft skin. She looked up into my eyes and squeezed my hand back. Peeta stood by Haymitch when he stopped pacing and watched us.

"Mommy and Daddy are… we're uh… we're going to a costume party," I said, forcing a smile while I lied.

"When will you be home?" she asked me, blinking innocently.

I hugged her instead of answering and squeezed my eyes shut to keep myself together. She twirled my braid around her finger as she hugged me too. Peeta, across the room, took the glass from Haymitch's hand and chugged it. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand after and handed the empty glass back over to Haymitch, who peered in it in hopes of finding some leftovers.

"I want you to have this," I said to Rosemarie, holding out my mockingjay pin to show her. "It's part of my costume."

"Don't you need it?" Rosemarie asked as I pinned it onto her shirt.

"Not anymore," I said, adjusting her shirt so that it was wrinkle free and resting right on her. "It's yours now."

"We can share it when you get back," Rosemarie told me.

I smiled at her and nodded, knowing that if I said anything else, I'd lose it. I scooped Rye up from next to her and kissed him on his chubby baby cheeks before Peeta finally made his way over. I left Peeta to say goodbye to the kids when the phone rang in the kitchen. I took the phone off of the hook, walked over to the pantry and shut the door behind me.

"Hello?"

"It's Gale."

"We're about to leave," I said to him, turning canned goods so that their labels were all visible on the shelf in front of me.

"I'm still here with Paylor. I will be here until I convince her to get you guys backup, I promise."

"Sounds like you're going to be there for a while," I said, laughing just a little bit, which caused my throat to choke with emotion.

"She'll cave, trust me," Gale said. "I'm coming to twelve by the morning to make sure all of you are okay."

I didn't have anything to say to that, so continued fixing the canned goods. Everything just seemed so unbelievable at the moment. When he heard silence on my end, he sighed, and I said what needed to be said.

"Gale, if anything happens to me and Peeta…"

"No," Gale said strongly, anger reviving up in his voice. "Don't say stuff like that."

"I'm only being realistic," I said back, rubbing my hand over my throat so that maybe I'd make it through the conversation without crying. "You have to find someone to take care of Rosemarie and Rye… my mom maybe, or whoever can support them."

"Katniss…"

"Gale! Just promise you'll find someone to take care of them."

I heard a crash on the other side of the phone and a grunt that belonged to Gale. His frustrated breathing huffed in my ear and then another crash. He probably broke a few things when he threw them, by the sounds of it.

"I'll do it," Gale said to me. "If anything happens to you two, I'll take care of them. You're all the family I have left."

"Fine," I said, quickly and quiet. "Then I should go."

"You should," he replied.

"Bye," I said.

"See you later."

With no goodbye and an assumption to see me again, Gale hung up the phone. I was left with the buzzing sound of his line as I stood in the dim pantry. When I came out and put the phone back, Peeta was standing with Haymitch waiting for me.

"Was that Gale?" Peeta asked.

"Yes. He's still with Paylor."

Haymitch cupped his hands over his ears and walked over to the front door. Peeta squeezed my hand in his as we both took what we assumed to be our last look at our kids. Peeta handed me over my backpack after he slung his over his shoulders and I heaved mine against my back. I took my bow from its spot leaning up against the wall and made sure my arrows were secured in the sheath over my arm. Peeta held onto the club that Haymitch had subtly hinted at taking, and once we were ready we turned to Haymitch.

"Have fun at that costume party," Haymitch said.

"Sure will, Haymitch," Peeta said, with an almost light tone.

"The kids should go to bed soon," I told him.

"Whenever they clonk out, I'll turn off the lights," Haymitch said.

I nodded and refrained from glancing back at the kids. Peeta opened the front door and stepped out on the porch, leaving me in the house.

"Go on now, sweetheart," Haymitch said, giving me a soft tap on the shoulder.

I joined Peeta on the front porch where we stood looking out at the street in front of the victor houses after Haymitch shut and locked the door behind us. Peeta had the map that Gale sent over to us in his hands and he was looking at it intently.

"We're going around back and sliding through the fence out of the district boundaries, right? So no one from town sees us?" Peeta asked me.

"That's the plan," I said, wanting to sigh, but my chest was so tight with fear that I could only just take in a small breath of night air.

Peeta stepped off of the porch and started walking toward the back. I followed a few steps behind him and he waited for me once we were at the fence a good distance away from our house. I could just make out the orange glow of the lights in our house before I slung my leg over one of the barbed wires of the fence that once was buzzing with electricity. Peeta grabbed my arm to steady me as I pulled my other leg out of District 12's boundaries.

Now that we were out of District 12, our trek to find Caesar Flickerman and his gang of once powerful people had started. We had to walk the entire perimeter of the district since we decided not to cut through town where there could be witnesses. Between the fence of District 12 and 11, was a buffer zone of sorts that was a good three miles in width of just woods.

If we kept walking and stopped once we did a one-eighty from the fence behind our house, we'd be just past the fence that I used to slip under to go hunting with Gale. Unfortunately for us, we were headed that way, but it would take us a few hours since we didn't have the luxury of cutting through town.

There was no sign of people in the woods as Peeta and I walked just a few feet away from the fence, keeping it visible to ensure that we were going the right way, but staying far enough away from it so that no one on the other side could see us.

Peeta was carrying his club with one hand as the majority of its weight rested on his shoulder. It rocked back and forth on his shoulder with every step he took, since he wasn't gripping it sturdily, instead just had his wrist slung over the end so that it wouldn't tip over. My bow, however, hadn't left its upright position since we made our way through the fence. Every hoot of an owl, every crunch of leaves that didn't seem to belong to us had me jerking left and right, front and back, ready to shoot my arrow through whatever danger it could be.

After about an hour and a half of walking, Peeta finally stopped and turned back to look at me. With the two of us no longer walking, it was even quieter. I made a mental note to tell Peeta not to be so loud when we started up again.

"We'll take a break," he said.

I nodded, not wanting to add noise by saying anything, and followed his lead when he sat down on the forest floor, his back pressed up against a thick tree. He sifted through his backpack and pulled out his night goggles, which he hadn't put on when we left since he wanted to get used to the dark, and set them over his eyes. He studied the map that he got out from his jacket pocket while I drank water.

I handed him over my water bottle after a few sips and he took it from me, keeping his eyes on the map as he drank from it. I wasn't hungry, but knew that with our luck, I finally would be when we were in the middle of doing something like killing someone, so I ate half a pack of crackers and handed the other half to Peeta.

Peeta tucked the map back into his jacket and I listened to the crunching sound of the crackers as he ate them. He shoved the wrapper in an outside pocket of his backpack when he was done and put his arm around me, as if to have at least a second of normalcy at the edge of the woods holding the people wanting to kill us.

"Should we keep going?" I asked him in a whisper that I pressed against his ear.

"In a second," he whispered back.

He waited a minute, maybe two, before pulling his arm out from behind me. When we stood, he went around to my backpack and got my night goggles out as well, handing them over to me after he zipped my backpack shut. I tugged them over my head and blinked a few times to get used to the green hue the goggles gave off when they lit the way for our eyes.

"We have maybe two hours before we get to where you and Gale used to hunt," Peeta said to me, just updating me on the distance we had traveled since we left the house.

I nodded at him, and he took the lead again, creating more noise than I knew we should. I didn't want to draw any attention to us, if for some reason someone was near, so let him go on without saying anything to him. I made sure to be extra quiet for the both of us.

My backpack was starting to wear on me as we continued our hike around the district. It was so obvious now that we were finally out doing something crazy like this, that it had been so long since we were young and in shape. After two kids and no magical Capitol medicine to rejuvenate me over the years, my body had taken a beating.

Peeta slowed ahead of me and I came to a stop just a few inches away from him.

"I'm going to go take a look at the fence," Peeta explained. "The woods are getting thick over here and we can't see where we're at in terms of the district perimeter."

"I'll stay here while you go. The less noise the better," I whispered.

"Are you sure you'll be okay?" he asked.

I nodded, squeezing his arm for reassurance. He took a few steps away from me until he was hidden behind the trees, and I rotated around in a circle with my bow pointed out in front of me as I waited for him to come back. It had only been about five minutes since he left when I heard the snap of a twig in the opposite direction he had gone in.

I instantly pulled the string of my bow back and held my hand to my cheek to steady myself. I didn't hear the sound again, but then there was the hollow hoot of an owl above me and a white flash behind the trees in front of me. I let my arrow fly from my bow and watched as it sunk into the chest of a Peacekeeper impersonator.

But even as relief flooded my body at the sight of the man falling to the ground yards in front of me, I found myself forming Peeta's name on my lips, feeling danger still around. His name never found its way to the air, though, as a hand that definitely was not his laid over my mouth.

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	7. Chapter 7

**Here's Chapter Seven! Tell me what you think about it!**

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Rekindling

Chapter Seven

I wasn't able to get out of the grasp of the person who had me in a headlock. My arms were crushed to my side as his arm held me to him, so my bow was no good to me. I heard him breathing next to my ear and felt the sturdy, stolen uniform he was wearing against my skin as he held my head. I tried to scream, but his hand was so tight over my mouth that I could barely even breathe. He was sweating, which I could smell on his hand as I tried to get a good enough breath through my nose.

"Katniss Everdeen," he said to me, his voice deep as he tore my goggles off. "You couldn't _possibly_ be stupid enough to be out here all alone, could you?"

And he was stupid if he thought I'd ever give up Peeta. I kicked my legs behind me, trying to hit him hard enough so that he would drop me, but I just kicked air. He pressed his head against the side of my face and held me tighter.

"Do you have anything to say before I decided what to do with you?"

He was obviously new at this, because he let his hand go from my mouth so that I could have a discussion with him, but I only let out a screech that I hoped Peeta would hear. He shook me hard, and I tried to keep my head steady, but it thrashed side to side.

"Why," I said, trying to break away from him. "Are you doing this?"

He chuckled, as if he was so amused.

"My kid sister got blown up to bits that night of the rebellion," he said, right against my ear. "That wouldn't have happened if you would have just kept to your shitty district and left us all alone."

I fought against him, jamming my elbows into his chest, but he just held me tighter, squeezing my head between his hands. I knew, from watching Cato and so many other tributes in my time in the Games that with one twist, my neck would be broken and I would be dead before I hit the ground.

"Maybe…" I started, huffing as I tried to wiggle free. "If you hadn't supported watching kids kill each other, I wouldn't have had to do it."

"Even in the last few seconds of your life, you want to be a feisty bitch," he said, his laugh rumbling against my back. "It will just make killing you more—"

I felt the warm, sticky spray of liquid burst onto the back of my head before I realized that the grip of the man who had caught me loosened. He tumbled away from me, falling to my left. From where I stood I saw the dent in his skull. I sunk to the ground, gripping the wet floor of the woods with my hands as I took it in. I could taste his blood, which dripped from the back of my head to my mouth, and I spit at the ground, hoping for the taste to disappear.

This time, it was Peeta's arms that I felt wrap around me. He guided me up to my feet and dragged me further into the woods, far away from the fence before letting me sink to the ground. The club that he used to bash my attacker's head in was coated in its own layer of blood, just like my skin.

"Get it off of me," I whispered to Peeta, wiping at my neck.

He pushed my hands away from the mess and I rested on all fours, focusing on the ground, which was only inches away from my face as I cried. I felt the splash of water on my neck, and saw even in the white light of the moon, the pinkish drips of water mixed with blood fall to the dirt around me. I heard the sound of the zippers of his backpack being opened and then he was wiping whatever remained of the man's blood from my braid and skin. He tossed the towel to the ground when he was done and gently pulled me up to look at him.

"It's just a little blood," he said to me, grabbing the towel again and wiping my cheek, which was marked with red too.

"A little?" I croaked, not able to get the feeling of the blood spraying onto me out of my memory. "You kil—"

Peeta shushed me then and hugged me as the two of us knelt on our knees in front of each other. He squeezed me as I buried my face against his shoulder and even though my neck had just been coated with blood, he held his hand there, where I knew he could feel my pulse.

Those men were the first. The first to die, the first to almost kill me. I was glad that the only thing I saw of the man who Peeta had killed was his head, not his face, not the colors he most likely still had dyed on his skin from his time in the capitol. The other one, well, I hadn't been close enough to get a good look at him before sending an arrow through his heart.

I could see my hands shaking in front of me as I held them close to my face to get a look at the blood that colored my fingers. Peeta wiped them off with the sleeve of his jacket, giving me a tiny shake so that I would look at him. I tried to focus on his face, but my adrenaline was coursing so rapidly through my body that I just wanted to lay down and wait until my head stopped spinning.

"Katniss," Peeta whispered to me, brushing my bangs out of my face with both of his hands. "It's okay."

"I killed one too," I told him, finally looking him in the eye.

"Good," Peeta said, keeping his hands on either side of my face. "Two down."

"There's only two of us, Peeta," I said, realizing our odds. "How are we going to do this?"

Peeta stood up, pulling me to my feet with him.

"The same way we won the first Games… when it was two against twenty two," Peeta said. "We just have to keep moving and outsmart everyone else."

"I want to get this over with," I told him, shivering because my wet hair pressed against my skin.

"Let's go then," he said.

Instead of walking in front of me, Peeta kept a tight grip on my hand as we walked through the woods. Without the fence as a guide, we had to hope that we were getting closer to my old hunting spot, where we'd be even closer to the group of people who hated us. The night sky was black, which I could see through the openings in the trees, and I knew it had to be early in the morning because we had been walking for a few hours already.

"Do you smell that?" I asked him after an hour or so.

I could feel the moisture in the air wetting my face and when I inhaled, I could smell water.

"No," Peeta said, looking over at me. "What is it?"

"Water," I replied, breathing deeply again. "We have to be near the stream."

The stream ran right through where Gale and I used to hunt, and where I swam on warm summer days with my dad when I was younger. The water in the air grew heavier the closer that we got, so I knew that we were almost there. The ground was especially damp around this area not only because of the rain that we had got all day, but because whenever it did rain, the water ran over the edge of the stream and flowed downhill if there was enough.

Peeta grimaced when he looked down at our feet and saw that they were covered in mud and that we were leaving a trail.

"How much further do you think we have until we get to the stream?" Peeta asked me.

"Not much further. Ten minutes," I said.

"We need to walk in the stream once we get there," he said, picking up his pace. "If they find our footprints we're done for."

"We better hurry then," I said, having to jog a little because Peeta was weaving through trees so fast.

After a minute, we were both jogging, trying our best to anticipate the low hanging branches of the newer trees, but even with my experience in these woods, I still found myself being slapped in the face with branches. Peeta slowed after a little bit and let go of my hand. He stood close to me as he listened, clearly noticing something that I hadn't while we ran.

I lifted my bow and my sense of hearing heightened as I focused on every sound around me. If we encountered even more Peacekeepers now after only a short forty five minutes since seeing the last two, then we would know how close we were. It would only be a short time before we came face to face with all of them.

Peeta reacted before I did when we saw the white uniform of someone sneaking around us behind trees. He grabbed the knives on the outside of his backpack and flung one a few yards out in front of him when the person wasn't quick enough to hop behind another tree. But even with one dead in a second, three more appeared, and then another one next to me. Instantly I pulled an arrow from my sheath and sent it to the Peacekeeper impersonator closest to me, and Peeta left my side when another one charged forward with a knife of his own waving.

Peeta blocked the blow that would have sliced him in the shoulder with his club, and the other two eyed me. In the dark, their white uniforms almost glowed, highlighting their bodies, but their faces weren't visible, which I was thankful for. I ducked behind a tree when one of them sent an arrow of their own toward me, and it stuck in the edge of the tree, crushing the bark.

I heard the scream of the Peacekeeper that Peeta was fighting when I emerged from behind the tree, pulling my bow back and doing a much better job than the one who sent an arrow at me because I hit him. He sunk to the ground and rested on his knees as the end of the arrow bobbed while the other end stayed drilled in his shoulder. A choking sound came from his lips, and I knew that if I could see his face, I'd see his eyes rolling into the back of his head.

Peeta yanked me away from the tree and dragged me back, starting to run. The only remaining fake Peacekeeper was shaking the person I had just shot, screaming his name. Apparently, I had just killed his buddy.

We didn't try to keep the branches from hitting us as we went, because all we wanted was to get away. I could hear the raged breathing of the remaining enemy and his footsteps smacking against the wet ground. Near my ear I heard something zip past me, and then saw an arrow stick in the ground to my right. Peeta tugged me harder, picking up his pace.

I heard another arrow coming our way and hoped that if it hit one of us, it'd hit our backpacks first to lessen the blow. Peeta let out a pained grunt and when I looked over at him, he was ripping an arrow away from his arms, keeping the arrow clenched in his hand so that the person running after us didn't have another arrow to shot at us.

I turned back then, knowing that the person was still far enough away from us so that he couldn't grab me, and shot an arrow in his direction. Peeta kept running, shouting my name to hurry, and I only followed him again when I heard the sound of the Peacekeeper's body hitting the ground.

By the time I was back with Peeta, the stream was in view. We heard shouting further off behind us and it took complete hope on our part to slide down the bank of the stream. I hoped as Peeta latched onto a root that was protruding from the side of the stream, that the people we heard wouldn't be able to see us.

Peeta had a good grip on me as our legs dangled in the fast moving water of the stream. I knew he was in severe pain, because I could hear him trying to hold in a moan. I squeezed my arm around his waist and gripped onto the side of the bank to maybe shift some of the burden of our weight to me. When we heard the voices that we had heard before we jumped right overhead, both of us stopped breathing. I kept my eyes trained on Peeta's and he looked intently back at me. It was the only thing distracting him from the pain of his arm and the fear of the people so close to us.

"You son of a bitch!" one of the voices said, his voice angry. "There's two of them and they've already killed six of us! How do you think that makes us look?!"

"Stupid," Peeta whispered.

I glared at him because it was stupid of _him_ to try to lighten the mood in this moment when he could easily give us away. He leaned his head against the bank of the stream, pressing himself closer to the mud.

"Flickerman is going to kills us if we come back with this news!" the voice said.

"It's not our fault!" a new voice said. "We'll just lie and tell him we couldn't find them."

At the sound of Caesar's name, I was instantly angry. Never in a million years would I have believed that Caesar Flickerman would stage a war to get us killed after all of this time. He always seemed so ready to help Peeta and me out while interviewing in front of the Capitol. Now, he was as bad as President Snow, and that didn't go over well with me.

The voices faded eventually, and after a few minutes we didn't hear them at all. The only noises were from the animals roaming around in the night. Peeta moved uncomfortably next to me and since for the moment it felt safe, I let him talk when he did.

"I can't hang onto this anymore, Katniss," he said. "My arm."

The moonlight that reflected on the water gave me a good source of light to look at his arm, which in one spot was a tangle of skin and fabric from his jacket.

"Let go then," I said to him.

He started to say something, maybe about how he hadn't been in water since the second Games and that wasn't exactly a good time for him in terms of getting good swimming lessons. I reached to the back of his backpack and pulled a short string just behind his head and different sections of the backpack inflated that would keep him afloat. The instant he heard the air fill inside of the backpack, he let go of the root and we both slid the rest of the way into the rain filled stream. I kicked my legs underneath me to keep myself above water until Peeta pulled the same string on my backpack.

"How'd you know there was one of these in here?" Peeta whispered to me, floating in front of me.

"Haymitch had to think of everything," I replied. "Cover our weaknesses."

The water was cold against my exposed skin, but my clothes did a good job at keeping my body heat in.

"He knows more than he let on, doesn't he?" Peeta asked me.

Since going to his house to collect supplies, I had been trying not to get my hopes up about Haymitch knowing what we were doing. I figured that it would be easier if he did. I didn't believe he had these backpacks packed and was okay with watching the kids because he thought we were just going out for the night. He knew that we were into something bad, whether he admitted it or not.

"I hope so," I said to Peeta. "Maybe he'll be more help than we think."

Peeta nodded, but I could tell there was something else he was thinking about.

"That TV was weird, don't you think?"

"What?" I whispered, wondering what he meant.

"Haymitch's TV. The new one we saw when we came into his house."

I forgot completely about the TV since after seeing it, a lot more things had taken precedent over it.

"Haymitch doesn't like TV," Peeta said, starting to try to come up with an explanation for it. "So why would he have it?"

I waved my hands under the water and let the water run between my fingers as I thought of a reason for Haymitch's TV. In the Games, the only time Haymitch paid any attention to it, was when Caesar Flickerman was presenting information about the Games, whether about our training scores or adding commentary about us while we fought in the Games.

"He's been watching Caesar Flickerman," I said, my eyes widening at the realization. "He knows everything."

"You don't think Effie…" Peeta trailed off as we both put everything together.

Of course, Effie had to have sent some kind of hidden message with her wigs after she staged her death. Otherwise, under the influence of alcohol, Haymitch would have been completely oblivious to anything going on around him. He has been getting messages from Effie before even Gale. He knew we were coming yesterday to ask for his help.

As we floated in the water, letting everything sink in, I couldn't help but wonder why Haymitch was still devoting his life to saving me and Peeta. I started to wonder something I could never say out loud to Peeta, something that Haymitch always considered during the Games. I had to wonder about which one of us Haymitch was hoping would come back. And who, if not both of us, he was working to save.

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	8. Chapter 8

**Hi! I hope all of you are liking this story. Be sure to review so I know what you think.**

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Rekindling

Chapter Eight

Peeta and I let the stream take us along a mile or so, which gave us time to rest and let Peeta's arm soak in the water. Once we were far enough away from the trail of footprints we left behind, we decided to get out on the opposite side of the stream. Peeta stayed in the water once we got to the edge and did his best to push me out of the water over the steep bank. When I was kneeling sturdily on the ground, I pulled Peeta up next to me by his good arm. He lay next to me when he was no longer in the water and reached his hand over to the wound on his arm. He couldn't see it, which was a good thing, but when he touched it he was clearly assessing the damage.

"We should get that cleaned," I said to him, standing from my spot near the water.

He followed me a few yards into the woods and sat down against a fallen tree that looked like it had been there for years. It was covered completely with green moss and small flowers were growing on it, closed in the darkness, waiting for the sun to rise. I was happy to see that wading in the water hadn't ruined the supplies in my backpack since the bag was waterproofed. I left Peeta with water to drink and some food to eat as I peeled the fabric away from his arm, which was sticking to his skin with blood.

Unlike in the Games, we had almost everything we needed in our bags. There was no need for parachutes with supplies that would save our lives. No one would be able to send anything anyway since our every move wasn't being watched by cameras like we were used to from the Games experiences. I wiped the gash on Peeta's upper arm off with a wipe drenched with disinfectant.

Peeta clasped his hand over his mouth, keeping an exclamation of pain from giving our spot away just incase another Peacekeeper wannabe was roaming around. I whispered an apology, but blotted it again with a new wipe. I wrapped gauze tightly around his arm until the blood was no longer visible seeping through the fabric and tied it off right above the cut so that maybe it would cut off some of the blood flow. When I was done, Peeta handed me the water and looked at me.

"Too bad today wasn't closer to our anniversary. This could be fitting," Peeta whispered, patting the bandage on his arm.

"Of all the things you could be thinking right now, you're thinking about our anniversary?" I asked him, drinking water and eating.

"It was the best day of _my_ life…" Peeta said, laughing in a whisper.

I rolled my eyes at him because he was always so corny about everything when it came to me. He knew I didn't think I deserved it either, since of all people he could have loved, he loved the girl who did almost everything wrong and everything for herself since the moment we met.

"We both got lucky, you know," he said, wrapping his arm around my knees, which were bent in front of me, and pulling me closer to him.

"I know," I said, rubbing my hands over his, trying to warm them up from their time in the water. "Hopefully our luck runs a little bit longer."

He nodded, and for a few minutes we just sat there, looking at the trees in front of us and listening to the noises behind us.

"Do you think we'll ever forget the Games? Like, never have to go to sleep hoping not to see them in our dreams," I asked him after a long time of being quiet. Sitting on the damp ground in the middle of the night, listening for any approaching threats had images flashing in my head of the Games. All I could wonder was if Peeta was remembering the same things.

"No," Peeta whispered, lacing his fingers in between mine. "But we can make the rest of our life so spectacular that we won't have to waste a minute talking about the past."

I hoped we'd have a life ahead of us to live. The idea of our lives ending in these woods, away from our family and home made my stomach hurt. I rested my head against the log behind me, and thought about what our life would be like if we both survived.

Peeta kept his eyes focused on the tree directly in front of us for a few minutes, taking a particular interest in it when I finally had to ask what he was looking for.

"Do you think you could climb that tree?" he asked when I asked about it.

"I haven't climbed a tree in years," I said, observing the low branches from my spot on the ground.

"You might be able to see something that will tell us where they are," Peeta said.

"Help me up there, then," I said, standing up from the ground.

I left my backpack next to the log and secured my sheath over my shoulders and kept my bow in my hand just in case I had to use it from the top of the tree. Peeta crouched to the ground, steadying himself on the tree, and I stepped on his shoulder, holding onto the tree as he stood up. I wrapped my arms around the first branch and then swung my legs over it so that I was sitting on it.

"You okay?" Peeta asked me.

"I'm okay," I whispered down at him.

He stayed at the bottom of the tree as I worked my way up. I was out of breath after only tackling three branches, and had to rest while I hugged the tree trunk for dear life. After a second pause, I climbed up a few branches, catching myself when my foot slipped by swinging on the branch above me. Peeta whispered my name when a dusting of bark fell on him from my slip, but I shushed him.

When I reached the very top of the tree, I looked out across the woods, trying to spot something that would give us an indication as to where Caesar Flickerman and his men were camping out. I could see the gap in the trees from where they lined the stream, and just when I was about to start my descent through the branches when I saw nothing, I caught a whiff of smoke. At first, my heart pounded and my first instinct was to get out of the tree and run since the last time I was in a tree and smelt fire, I was nearly killed by the Gamemakers' attempt to liven up the Games, but then I saw the thin line of smoke from a campfire coming up through a space in the trees.

I made my way quickly down the tree, not being as careful as I knew I should have been, but I needed to tell Peeta. My hands got scrapped by the bark of the branches each time I lowered myself down to the next lowest level of the tree. Peeta was still waiting for me once I got to the last branch, and he took my hand so that I could jump to the ground.

"Did you see anything?" Peeta asked me once I was on two feet.

"Well, I do know one thing is for sure," I said to him as I collected my backpack from the ground.

"What's that?" Peeta asked, watching me.

"These people are idiots."

Even in the darkness I could see Peeta's grin, and I couldn't help but smile with him.

"They have a fire going," I explained to him.

"Rookie mistake," he said, still smiling.

I grabbed his hand in mine and squeezed it. I don't know why I was so happy, because really we had just found the spot where we'd kill a lot of people, and maybe even get killed ourselves to ensure that these people never bothered anyone again. Something just felt satisfying about it though. Maybe it was the fact that Peeta and I, after all these years still had our survival instincts in tact, and that we really weren't rookies anymore. But our enemies were. Rookies, I mean. They didn't know that making a fire at night was a bad idea. Or that we were so close to them, stronger because we were together. And they didn't know who they were up against, so for that, I tugged Peeta along, heading straight for them.

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**unknownbyhim22**


	9. Chapter 9

**Hi! I hope all of you are enjoying this story! Please be sure to review so that I know what you think. Enjoy!**

* * *

Rekindling

Chapter Nine

It only took a few minutes for me and Peeta to find the trail that Caesar Flickerman's rebellion group made from their constant back and forth from their campsite to other areas of the woods. We walked far enough away from it so that we wouldn't come face to face with someone leaving their camp, but close enough to keep it in sight.

I could smell the smoke from the campfire that they were still letting burn, and eventually we saw the orange light flickering on the leaves of the trees closest to them. When we heard voices near the trail, I lifted my bow to shoot whoever was making their way out into the woods, but instead felt Peeta's hand on my shoulder, pushing me down behind a row of bushes.

He pressed his index finger to his lips and shook his head at me. I didn't know when he wanted to start this fight we would eventually start, but I figured right now would have been the perfect time. He didn't seem to agree. When the voices faded, Peeta very quietly whispered to me.

"I'm going after those two," he explained, glancing over the bushes to see if they were turning around or not. "Climb one of these trees and start picking them off while I'm gone."

"You shouldn't go alone," I said, not remembering anywhere in our plans to split up.

"We can't kill these guys so close to camp or they'll all come out at once," Peeta said. "Go on."

I couldn't protest because he was already making his way away from me and any loud noise from me would have given the people impersonating the old Capitol's Peacekeepers a reason to leave their camp. I stayed behind the bush, not moving even when the branches scratched against my face, until Peeta disappeared into the darkness. I made my way a little bit closer to camp. A group of all males wearing those tight white uniforms that the Peacekeepers used to wear were sitting around the fire, eating food from cans and off of the ends of sticks.

I picked a tree with small knots in the trunk to climb, even though the branches were higher up from the one I climbed earlier. I knew that if one of those guys found me in the tree, they'd be too heavy to climb up after me. I slipped on the first try up the tree, scrapping my hands further, but made it to the lowest branch on my second try. Once I was a few branches up, I straddled the branch I would remain on, locking my ankles together so that I could use my bow and not have to hold onto the tree.

From my spot, I could see the camp perfectly. Whoever these people were, they had been there for a long time now, because they had an organization system clearly designated. Their food was tied up in a tarp, hanging from a tree so that animals couldn't get into it. I could have easily hit the rope dangling the food over the ground, but knew that there would be no point since these people, unlike the Careers, didn't have the ground lined with explosives. At least, I hoped they didn't.

A good ways away from their campfire, which was at the center of their camp, was a small makeshift building, built with construction wood. It looked like it had gone up in a matter of hours and wasn't very sturdy, but that was probably the place they slept in since they weren't the type to sleep on dirt. I rolled my eyes at the thought, wanting just one of them to step away long enough so that I could shoot them just for being annoyingly Capitol-like.

From where Peeta and I just walked from, I heard a muffled groan, and then a shout that was cut off mid-scream. Only one person from around the campfire seemed to notice, but they simply looked over their shoulder in the direction the noise came from, and then turned back to their can of beans. The people sitting around the campfire didn't seem interested in doing much of anything other than eat, and since I couldn't just shoot one of them off of their tree stumps, I had to wait for one of them to move.

Luckily, it was only after a minute, when the fire was starting to get low that one of them had to get up to pick some wood off of the pile stacked just a yard or so away from my tree. The same person who had heard the scream from the woods and responded only by turning away, stood up from his spot in front of the fire and made his way to the wood pile.

He walked so lazily, just swinging his arms back and forth on his way, which made me angry considering what he was out here doing, who he was impersonating. Even the Peacekeepers who once wore his outfit did their job with more finesse, even if it was a terrible job, created by terrible people. His personality bothered me, even though I never heard him speak or seen him out of that outfit before in my life, but someone who walked around as if all of this was just some normal, everyday happening, couldn't be good. So, when I shot him, right between the shoulder blades once he was behind the woodpile and out of view from the rest of the people, the twinge of guilt I felt only lasted a minute.

And after that minute was up was when everything started. Someone came running down the path Peeta and I had been watching, shouting something, screaming about an enemy, which caused the people around the campfire to all jump up at once, running around like a bunch of crazy people. Their campsite might have been organized, but their battle plan, or whatever they were calling it, was not.

I picked the person off who was running toward the camp, watching him fall flat before he could say anything to the people he was trying to warn. I didn't see Peeta, which I expected since the person I had just killed was running from someone. A few more people who hadn't been around the campfire rushed out of the shack. Most of them were half dressed in their Peacekeeper uniforms, so my assumption about that being the place they slept in was right.

I loaded my bow again and shot the arrow into the center of the camp, shooting another person and sending everyone running away from where the body dropped. I could see the panic on their faces and see them searching the trees and the sky to find me. Unlike their white uniforms, my black outfit hid me in the darkness. I shot one more bow at the group of people picking up their weapons from near another tree. If they would have had their weapons with them before my arrows started flying, they may have been able to do something.

It was just when my arrow sunk into another body when I felt a sharp pain in my leg. I nearly fell from the tree as a result, but clung to the branch when I lurched forward. A knife stuck into the branch I was sitting on, which I saw when I went to reach for my leg. I squeezed my shin with all the strength I could muster while I yanked the knife out of the tree. Below me, I saw the glimmer of someone's eyes reflect in the moonlight and could hear the clawing of hands and shoes against the bark.

I had to use my sense of hearing to target whoever was at the base of the tree and sent their knife back at them, hearing the impact of it before catching the outline of them tumbling from the tree. The person was still rolling around on the ground, groaning as he fought death, when I made my way to lower branches. I knew that someone would find me in the tree if they saw him lying just below it, so made my way down.

I tumbled onto the forest ground when I slid down the trunk of the tree. I was right next to the person who had sent the knife through the branches of the trees well enough that it hit me. He stared right at me as he lay helplessly on the ground and mumbled something to me.

I sat up from the ground, crawling backwards so that I was creating a distance between the two of us just in case he was faking it. I knew that he wasn't though, as I watched him from behind the tree I had just jumped from. He still kept his eyes on me while I moved around, and then his mouth formed into a recognizable word.

_Bitch_.

My lips slowly moved upward, a feeling of amusement flooding my body. Maybe, if he had used the word _please_ I would have ended his misery right there and then by pulling the knife from his chest, causing him to quickly bleed to death. Since he wasn't a tribute thrown into the same game as I was, there because the Capitol forced him, I turned to leave him to die a slow and painful death.

I stayed low to the ground and made sure I was behind a tree more often than not, and kept my eyes on the camp. The people who were frantic when my arrows were shooting into their makeshift home were calmer now that no arrows were shooting at them, and they were looking at maps and collecting equipment. From my spot, I counted eight people, which seemed manageable compared to the number of people we started with, which was twenty two, like the number of tributes Peeta and I were up against in the Games.

I snuck my way closer to the camp, around near the tree that held the food. I knelt on the ground and lay flat so that I could see what they were doing from under a bush. Peeta still had yet to make an appearance, or give me a sign that he was okay. I didn't see him when I was in the tree, and knew there was a chance that he was hurt since from my spot above everyone else I heard him kill one person and killed the other one myself when he attempted to come back to camp.

My heart raced when I realized that the person I heard being killed could very well have been Peeta. I assumed it was one of the Peacekeeper impersonators since only one came back, but the other one could be with Peeta now, torturing him for all I knew. The idea of Peeta being dead made something inside of me snap. I guess it would be fair to say that I went a little bit crazy, because I found myself leaping up from the ground and running right into the camp.

The group of men hurriedly coming up with a plan or explanation of the arrows coming from an unknown vantage point was startled to see me. None of them even had time to react as I sent two arrows in a row into the group, killing each person they hit. The others either ran off in different directions or set their sights on me, wanting probably to be the one to kill me.

One of the men coming toward me, knife waving wildly, was much younger than the rest. He seemed to be either in his late teens or early twenties, and his strong build showed me I had something to worry about. The men who chose not to run or come after me stood shocked in a huddle, watching what was happening in front of them. I thought for sure that their hatred for me and Peeta would have trumped their fear and they would be helping this guy kill me, but apparently I gave these people too much credit.

I shot another arrow at the guy coming after me, but he ducked to the ground before it could hit him. I took that opportunity to kick at him as hard as I could and connected my foot with his chest. Blood splattered onto the dirt below him and when he looked up, the blood was coming from his mouth. He stabbed at the air, trying to get me as the other people standing around doing nothing finally decided to do something. They ran for the tree where all the weapons were sitting and took too long of a time picking them out.

I kicked at the person again, swinging my bow at him so that maybe I'd send it through him if I used enough force. He grabbed my ankle, the one that had been cut by the person who found me in the tree, and yanked me to the ground. The wind was knocked out of me temporarily as he dragged me across the ground. I flailed harshly to try to break free from him, but he kept dragging me, faster and harder.

I gripped at the ground, hoping to find something other than dirt to grab onto, but found nothing. As he pulled me toward the shack, I was just able to see a knife soaring at another one of the Peacekeepers and hoped, as I was thrown into the room, that the knife belonged to Peeta.

The man who had dragged me into the shack knelt on top of me and wrapped his hands around me neck. I could hear the other people outside screaming and fighting, but couldn't tell what was going on because the door was closed. The man shook me, but then slowly let go when I beat my hands against his arms.

I was breathing so fast that I thought I was hyperventilating as the man peered down at me. I didn't know what he was doing. He could have killed me by now, but he was acting as though he too was catching his breath as he wiped blood away from his face. He kept his knee pressed into my chest to hold me down.

From under him I could see his arm wrapped in a tight bandage, and he wasn't wearing the Peacekeeper jacket that everyone else was. He must have been one of the people who were sleeping when I started the panic. I punched at him, trying to free myself before his weight crushed my ribs. When he looked down at me, shaking his head, I stopped just for a second.

"Calm down," he said, laughing slightly.

His expression was completely different from what it was when he went after me with his knife waving. He was sweating, which I could see seeping through his shirt and wetting his blonde hair. I didn't understand how or why he could be telling me to calm down under the circumstances, so swung at him again. He stabbed his knife into the wall so that it was stuck by the tip of the blade and let up the pressure of his knee.

He peered down at me for a minute again and seemed to be studying my face. I was so out of breath that I let him, and took the time to get my strength back. Something crashed up against the door and shook the entire shack.

"What are you doing?" I asked him, so confused as to why he wasn't acting like the psycho he was outside.

"I'm not looking to kill you," he said.

"Oh, right," I said, shaking my head. "You're saving me for Caesar."

"Nah," he said, shrugging.

I looked at him with what I knew was pure confusion. He grinned slightly and reached under his shirt, pulling out a gold necklace from under it. The pendant dangling from the end of it just confused me more. My mockingjay symbol, the one that was used for the rebellion hung from his neck.

"Why aren't you killing me?" I asked.

"I'm just waiting for Peeta to kill those idiots," he replied.

"Peeta…" I whispered, looking at the door again when more shouting came from the other side. "This doesn't make sense."

I punched at his knee so that he would get off of me. He lifted his knee and let me sit up, but stayed by the door as if making sure I didn't get out. I grabbed an arrow from my sheath and readied it in my bow. He looked at me with raised eyebrows and put his hands in the air.

"How do I know you're not going to kill me?" I asked him.

"Because you knew my brother," he said.

I squinted my eyes to get a better look at him, but only saw a young kid with blonde hair and a muscular, powerful build. I couldn't figure out anyone from my past that looked related to him.

"Cato," he said when I didn't say anything.

My eyes widened, realizing that maybe the blonde hair was what made them similar. I shook my head still, not sure. If he really was his brother, then he should want me dead more than anyone. I killed Cato, after all.

"You should want to kill me then. I killed Cato," I said, scooting back so that I was against the wall.

"You didn't have a choice," he said with a look of disgust on his face, the same look that anyone who hated the Capitol always got when thinking of the Games. "You had a choice to let him suffer, though, but you didn't."

I lowered my bow and looked at him skeptically. He leaned against the door and crossed his arms over his chest. His chin was pink from the blood that had spewed out of his mouth and the bandage on his arm had a dot of red on it from the blood that seeped through it.

"What happened to your arm?" I asked him.

"You should know," he said, rolling his eyes at me. "You did it."

"When?"

Unless in the time he dragged me to the shack he had bandaged his arm up, which definitely didn't happen, I couldn't figure out how I could have possibly done that to him.

"You chased me in the woods near your house a few weeks ago. Shot me with one of your arrows."

"That's your fault. Why were you watching my house?" I asked him, angry.

"To make sure you weren't about to walk into a dangerous situation," he replied, jingling with the knob on the door. "It was probably best that you went after me and not one of the others who were watching you from the woods."

"How many others?" I asked him.

"Two or three that day," he said, shrugging as if it weren't a big deal. "Most of the people here are all about preserving themselves and took no interest in saving me from you. I'm sure when they saw you charge after me they ran and hid until the coast was clear."

"You're working with a bunch of cowards," I said, standing up from the floor.

A shooting pain came from the flesh wound on my leg and I lifted my foot from the floor to relieve some of the pressure.

"Well, you don't have to say that twice," he said. "I'm going to check on what's happening outside, but stay here so you're not a target. I'm sure they've forgotten about you in here by now."

I took a step forward when he opened the door, hoping to see Peeta in the moment the campsite was visible, but I only saw the legs of someone lying dead near the door as Cato's brother stepped harshly on top of them. When the door shut behind him, I felt more panicked then I had when he dragged me into the shack. I had a bad feeling about being in here alone, so ignored what he said about staying in here to be safe. I grabbed the knob of the door, but when I twisted it, the door stayed closed, securely locked in place.

I kicked at the door a few times with my good leg, but the pain from my cut increased as I steadied myself with that leg. I limped my way to the knife that he had stabbed into the wall and yanked it from its spot.

"Katniss!"

I spun when I heard Peeta's voice, but that wasn't what scared me as I stepped away from the wall. At the far corner of the shack, right where the corner touched the ground, I could see the wood charring from something burning on the outside, and I knew, as I frantically hacked at the door with the knife that if I didn't break out of here soon, I'd be burned to death.

Literally, the girl on fire.

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**Much love,**

**unknownbyhim22**


	10. Chapter 10

**I hope all of you are liking this story! Let me know what you think. Enjoy!**

* * *

Rekindling

Chapter Ten

The shack filled up with smoke fast. I had barely made any progress on the door with my knife when I started to suffocate. I had to fall to the ground and try to get oxygen from the crack underneath the door within a minute of the place catching fire. The shack shook harshly following a loud bang on the door, and I looked up from the floor to see the door knob being broken from its place. A cloud of white, snow like material sprinkled down on me after the door flung open.

Puffs of smoke made their way out of the opened doorway and I reached for air, crawling forward as the white foam kept falling around me. Peeta ushered me out of the shack, leaving the place to burn once I was no longer inside. I guess Haymitch knew that my old girl-on-fire persona couldn't stay in the past and packed Peeta's backpack with a fire extinguisher. No wonder his was heavier than mine.

I sat on the ground and watched the place burn, breathing in fresh air. Peeta rested his hands on his knees and threw up all over his boots. The side of his face turned to me was completely covered in blood and his jacket was ripped all over the place.

Since it had been a few minutes since I came from the shack, and there was no one running to kill me, I took the opportunity to look around the camp. I saw the people I had shot from the tree with arrows sticking out of their bodies, but others laid dead too. Some seemed to be sleeping, since I couldn't see a single wound on them, but then the pool of blood they were lying on top of indicated that something somewhere was fatal.

Peeta took his jacket off and pressed it against his face. His hands were visibly shaking and he turned to look at me once he had the gash on his head covered. On his other cheek, it was clear that someone had punched him hard. There was a purple bruise already forming and his skin was swollen around his eye.

"How many are left?" I asked Peeta.

He looked around the camp for a little bit, his mouth moving as he counted to himself. He tugged a piece of paper from his pant pocket and counted some more. He must have been keeping a tally going, because once he was done looking at the paper, he answered.

"Just three," Peeta said. "But we need to get away from here… before they ambush us."

I stood up since I agreed with him, but when I turned around, I stepped on someone. I felt the cushion of their skin under my foot, and looked down to see Cato's brother lying at my feet. His soft blonde hair was red with blood, and I dropped down next to him to shake him.

"Katniss, he's dead," Peeta said, reaching for my arm.

I pulled my arm away from Peeta and pressed my hand on the man's neck, trying to feel a pulse. When I felt nothing, I started to panic. His body was still warm, so it had only been minutes since he died, but there was always a chance for him to get up. I saw Peeta dead once, no heartbeat at all, so I knew I could save him.

"Peeta, please, we have to help him!" I said, shaking the man who had dragged me into the shack to temporary safety. "He's good."

Peeta pulled me up from the ground and started walking me away from the dead body. He wouldn't let me look back each time I strained my neck to get a look at the camp littered with our enemies.

"We need to get away from here," Peeta said, tugging me along the pathway leading out of the camp.

I kept protesting as Peeta started making his way back the way we came. Even with his head bleeding, his body aching from the blows he endured and his psyche messed up from the killings; he dealt with me with patience. If I were him, I would have yelled at me to shut up about the guy already, but he didn't say anything at all until we were at the stream.

"That's not Cato's brother," Peeta said when we stood at the edge of the stream.

I still wouldn't let up on begging to go back for him. Maybe I was so hung up on his death because I wished Cato hadn't died the way he did, or at all for that matter.

"What?" I asked, confused. "How do you know?"

"Because," Peeta said, sitting down on the ground so that he could slide into the stream. I sat down next to him and he grabbed my hand. "Cato had sisters."

His words terrified me as we both sat on the wet ground. They terrified me because I knew he would know since he spent a few days in the Games being buddy-buddy with the Careers. It terrified me too, because I had so stupidly believed that that man was there to help me and Peeta, when in reality, he was just looking to kill me.

Peeta didn't say anything more, he just scooted closer to the stream and we both jumped in, letting the water wash the blood from our skin and clothes. The cold temperature cooled my hot skin and washed the smoke out of my hair. Peeta's hand was still holding mine as we surfaced, and I had to tread water since my backpack was somewhere in the woods, near the tree or the bush or the shack.

The sky was starting to brighten with the approach of morning, and a soft hue of purple rimmed the sky where it hovered over the trees. I could see the brightened area of the sky where the sun would rise from in a few hours. It was hard to believe we accomplished all of what we did in just a night's time. At the thought of everything being almost over, I started crying.

Peeta had to hold me up in the water because I couldn't tread water and cry, and I pressed my face against the strap of his backpack that rested on his shoulder. I was glad that we were in the stream, because maybe if the three remaining Peacekeeper impersonators heard me crying, they still wouldn't be able to find us among the rocks poking up from under the water.

After a few minutes, I moved away from Peeta, wiping at my face.

"We should get moving," he said.

I nodded and swam next to him as we made our way to the other side of the stream, where we jumped from hours earlier when we were being chased by that Peacekeeper. We pulled ourselves up to the other side and laid there for a few minutes to catch our breath.

Peeta's chest moved up and down heavily and he reached up to his head again, feeling the cut. I could tell he was starting to come back and forth into reality and his thoughts, because his face was stuck in a grimace that told me he was remembering something.

"We should put a bandage on that," I whispered to him, sitting up.

"We don't have anything," Peeta said to me. "Your backpack had the medical supplies."

"Then we need to get home," I said, helping him up from the ground.

With my injured leg, and Peeta's head injury, I had to lead us through the woods, and Peeta had to walk us. I was leaning most of my weight on him as we walked, but I told him which way to go when his head hurt so much he couldn't think. Peeta could only last so long carrying me under his arm as I wrapped my arm over his shoulder to get a grip on him, so we had to take breaks every couple of minutes. By the rate we were going, it looked like we wouldn't be home until tomorrow this time.

We were resting again about an hour after we left the stream when a buzzing noise of something mechanical caught our attention. I looked into the sky to see if I could tell where the noise was coming from and Peeta walked around a little bit to follow the noise. When he stopped, starring fearfully at something in the sky, I followed his gaze.

Hovering just above us was a silver parachute. Peeta started backing away from me when I grabbed the parachute from the air. He bumped up against a tree when he couldn't go any further and his eyes were creased under a worried expression.

"Katniss," Peeta started, looking around the sky nervously, like maybe he was expecting a trackerjacker hive to fall at his feet, or come face to face with a mutt. "What's going on?"

"I don't know," I said, twisting the top of the container that the parachute delivered.

"Someone's watching us," Peeta said, keeping his eyes on the sky as his fear escalated.

His hands gripped into the tree behind him and the blood coming from his forehead dripped down his cheek. He touched it as if just realizing it was there and panic started to take him.

"No, Peeta," I said, going over to him. "No one is watching us. This isn't the Games."

"Yes, it is. You're going to kill me," Peeta said while nodding his head. His eyes were wild and he was shaking. "Cato! She's here! I found her!"

His scream caused the wildlife around us to stir. Birds flew off their branches and I could hear the leaves ruffling on the ground from animals running away from the noise. I cupped my hand over his mouth, hoping that no one was around to hear him because I couldn't take fighting off three killers and convincing my husband he wasn't in the Games at the same time. If people came after me dressed in the Peacekeeper uniform, Peeta would go insane. He'd think for sure we were playing in the Game designed by the Gamemakers. He wiggled underneath by grasp and tried to push my hand away from him.

"This is not the time for this!" I said to him, pissed at Haymitch for sending the parachute when he knew what it would do to Peeta.

I was, of course, assuming the parachute was from Haymitch, since parachutes came from mentors, and that was basically still his job.

"Who am I?" I asked him.

I slowly let go of his mouth so that he could respond, but he just looked at me, terrified. This was the most out of it I had seen Peeta in a while, and I had to repeat the question.

"Who am I?" I asked him again.

"Katniss Everdeen," Peeta whispered.

"No. I'm Katniss Mellark," I told him. "Your wife."

His eyes scanned my face, maybe to see if I was lying or looked like I was about to kill him. The look of terror left his face for one of confusion, since I'm sure he was wondering why he would marry his enemy.

"President Snow…" he started.

"Is dead. You're in District Twelve now."

"Someone sent the parachute," Peeta said to me. "Who?"

"Haymitch, probably," I replied.

"Haymitch wants to kill me," Peeta told me.

"No he does—"

"He does!" Peeta exclaimed, trying to move away from me.

I pushed Peeta back against the tree and shouted to him to stay put. He was going to give our spot away for sure if he kept shouting the way he was. The look in his eyes was still there, and I couldn't think of anything to say to convince him of his life today. He looked so confused and so angry at me that for a second it didn't even seem like Peeta standing in front of me.

"Look at the package," Peeta said to me, grumbling. "See who it's from."

"Don't move."

I stayed close to him as I pulled the piece of paper out of the container, finding nothing else but the note. Typed on a thin strip of paper were two words that made my heart drop into my stomach.

_Get Home -H_

Peeta peered over at the note, but I pulled it away from his view. He couldn't freak out about Haymitch sending the note, but I needed him to snap out of his confusion if I wanted to go home. I wouldn't leave him here, either, since alone in the woods I knew he'd probably kill himself.

"Peeta we need to go home," I said calmly.

"Home?" Peeta repeated, as if not believing he and I had one together.

"Yes, to the kids."

"Kids?"

"Peeta!" I whined, not knowing what to do. "Just snap out of this!"

"Out of what?"

I wanted to hit him, honestly, I did, but I knew he'd think I was killing him, so I did the opposite of that. I grabbed him and kissed him, pushing him up against the tree. When I felt his arm snake around my waist, I knew that I had him. I kissed him for just a little bit longer, hoping that when I pulled away he'd be fully aware of his reality.

"Katniss?" he whispered, his face calm as he looked me in the eye. "What are you doing?"

"Oh, hell, Peeta," I said, yanking him from the tree and walking fast.

"What?" he asked, jogging slightly to keep up with me.

"You just went all Crazy Peeta on me," I said. "Haymitch sent us a parachute."

"What did he send?"

Peeta skipped the apology for losing his grip on reality, and I handed him over the paper that Haymitch sent. He read it and looked over at me, saying nothing before picking up his pace, sprinting forward. I followed him, even though my leg was burning like crazy and even though my stomach hurt at the thought of what we would find when we got home. We didn't bother traveling around the perimeter of District 12 to get home; instead, when we got to the fence I used to cut through to go hunting, we slipped through it and ran as fast as we could through town.

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**unknownbyhim22**


	11. Chapter 11

**Hey, Everyone! Please be sure to review this chapter! It's one of my favorites. Enjoy!**

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Rekindling

Chapter Eleven

Since it was so early in the morning, not many people were outside to see us. Greasy Sae was sitting on her front porch plucking the feathers off of a chicken when we passed her. She left the chicken on the front step when she started following us. A few others, like Peeta's employees who were already up early baking bread saw us too, and they stood on the front porch of the bakery, watching us pass. Most of them looked worried, since Peeta was visibly bleeding and we were dressed in outfits they recognized from the Games. They didn't stop us for explanations, though; instead let us sprint through town.

I smelt the fire before I saw it, and sent Peeta a worried look that he returned back to me as we got closer and closer to our house. The smell only got stronger, and then we could see the black clouds of smoke rising into the sky. When we finally got near the victor houses, we saw our house, Haymitch's as well, burnt to the ground.

Paylor and a group of military members were in front of our house with their guns pointed and their crew running around, trying to communicate what was going on. There were trucks pulled up close enough so that their hoses could reach the fire. Peeta and I shoved passed a few people, getting to the front of the crowd.

Caesar Flickerman was standing right at the edge of our house as walls that weren't completely fallen to the ground blazed with fire. No one seemed to notice me or Peeta because they had their guns pointed at Caesar. He was pointing a gun back at them, looking so stupid and so out of place with it. Paylor was shouting something at him, and I couldn't understand why no one was shooting him.

Peeta looked just as angry next to me, but he wasn't looking at Caesar, or looking at the other people around us for a familiar face. He was just searching the woods behind our house, the streets beyond us, the ashes from his spot. I knew he was looking for our kids.

At the sight of my burned down house, and seeing neither of my kids, I used my last arrow that was already in my bow to shoot Caesar since no one else seemed to have the authority. I dropped my bow from my hands when Paylor and her team turned to see me, and watched Caesar Flickerman drop to the ashes of my house. He had the most sickening smile on his face as he dropped, which caused me to rush forward, wanting to make sure he was dead, and beat him to death if he wasn't.

I was a few strides away from him when I felt a pair of arms grab me around the waist and pick me up from the ground. I fought against who was holding me back, screaming Caesar's name, and Rye and Rosemarie's and Haymitch's. I punched at the arms of who was holding me, and knew when he turned me to take me further away from the house, that it wasn't Peeta, because Peeta was standing shocked a few feet away from me.

"Katniss!" I heard Gale say in my ear. "It's alright."

"It's not alright!" I screamed, hitting him, kicking my feet. "Let go of me!"

He released me slowly, but then Paylor and a few of her people were rushing at me, and before I knew it, I was being handcuffed and pushed toward one of the white vans lining the street. Someone had Peeta too, and they handed him over to Paylor as one of the armed military men pushed me down on the edge of the trunk. Peeta pressed the side of his body against me as they ordered him to sit down next to me.

Paylor stood in front of us, looking at us with great concern in her eyes. Gale stood next to her, saying something about it not being necessary to handcuff us since we weren't a danger to them.

"Where are my kids?" I screamed, kicking dirt off the ground at Paylor.

"Katniss, Peeta," she started, looking at the two of us. "How many people did you kill tonight?"

"Every one that tried to kill us!" Peeta said back. "Now, answer my wife's questions!"

"Where are they?" I asked again, this time looking at Gale because I knew that he would tell me.

He shook his head, his face red with emotion and I was instantly sobbing, and Peeta was screaming at Gale about his stupid plan that took us away from home, and inevitably left our kids defenseless.

"You son of a bitch!" Peeta screamed, jumping forward at Gale, only to be shoved back onto the car by one of Paylor's people.

I couldn't catch my breath as I cried, thinking about my kids being in the house as it burned to the ground with only Haymitch to comfort them.

"I don't know where they are," Gale tried to explain. "We have no way of knowing they were in the house."

"They were in the house!" I shouted at him. "We left them in the house!"

"Unhandcuff them!" Gale said angrily to Paylor. "Now."

Paylor looked at him with raised eyebrows, as if wondering where he thought he got the authority. Gale was stronger and bigger than Paylor and even if there were tons of guards around, he wouldn't have a problem forcing the key from her. She knew that too, so handed him over the keys so that he could release us.

"Don't try anything," Paylor said to me and Peeta once Gale was done.

I shook my head at her, hating her and everyone around us because they just didn't get it. They didn't get that we spent the entire night fighting for our lives, only for the most important people in the world to us to be gone when we got back. Our lives were over.

"Gale," I said, hiccupping. "What happened?"

Peeta was crouched over so that his head was between his knees, and I knew he was going to be sick from the loss of blood and the adrenaline coursing through him, and because it was taking everything I had not to be sick myself at the idea of my kids being dead.

"We weren't here when it happened."

"Of course not," I said, angry. "Otherwise my kids wouldn't be dead!"

Gale flinched, looking down at the ground because he couldn't come up with anything to say back. I heard a woman's voice from the other side of the van, asking about me and Peeta. I figured it was Greasy Sae, but then I saw Effie turning the corner, stopping when she laid eyes on us. I started crying all over again, because seeing her was like seeing my mom after a while of being homesick.

She rushed over, grabbing me in her arms. She put a hand on Peeta's shoulder and I leaned against her. Her perfume wafted into my nose and I started to remember everything about the Games and about the advice she and Haymitch had given me and Peeta before and after them. They never could have prepared us for this.

"Where's Haymitch?" Effie asked Gale, her voice wispy and light even around this mortifying scene of burning houses and murder.

"I don't know," Gale replied.

"Oh, Haymitch," Effie said with a click of her tongue. "Never was good at sticking to schedules!"

I pulled away from Effie. Peeta looked at me and then back at her. She had grey hair that was straight and in a bob. She looked so much more human without her wigs, but she still had that smear of colorful lipstick on her lips.

"What do you mean by that?" Peeta asked her.

Effie turned toward Gale, waving her hands in the air as she talked to herself about something under her breath. She paced back and forth just past the street and the three of us watched her in confusion. She placed her hands on her hips and looked out at the victor houses, taping her chin.

"Oh there!" she said in a sing song voice, waving her hand in the air at someone. "There they are! How sweet."

Peeta and I jumped off of the trunk of the van and stood with her. We didn't see what she saw, only the orange glow of our burning house and the other vacant victor houses. But then, as Effie said Haymitch's name again, we saw the front door of one of the vacant houses open and Haymitch step out of the house. He had an irritated look on his face, like maybe he wasn't up to listen to Effie, but Peeta and I didn't care about that right now. What we cared about were the two kids tucked under Haymitch's arms as he carried them our way.

Peeta and I ran to Haymitch, running as fast as we had home, and nearly knocked him over when we grabbed the kids. Rosemarie squeezed her arms around my neck as I picked her up and her hair still smelt like the strawberry scented shampoo I had washed her hair with before we left. Rye babbled to Peeta, and Peeta squeezed him tight, kissing him over and over again.

"Mama," Rosemarie said, looking me in the eyes. "I love Uncle Haymitch."

Peeta and I laughed. Haymitch let out a sigh.

"We do too, Rosemarie. We love Uncle Haymitch too," I said.

I grabbed Haymitch in my free arm and hugged him tightly. He resisted at first as I pressed my face against his alcohol scented shirt, but then he hugged me and Rosemarie back.

"We played hide and go seek," Rosemarie told us as I let go of Haymitch. "And lava monster."

"Lava monster?" Peeta repeated.

"If you touch the fire you die," Haymitch explained. "I'm surprised they didn't know the game."

"Oh, Haymitch," I said with a sigh, shaking my head.

He didn't realize how important he was to us. He just stood there as if we were visiting outside like we did when Peeta went off to work each morning. He didn't act as if he just saved our kids. Greasy Sae came over then, and since she followed us when she saw us running through town, she had seen everything.

"Let me take them," she said to us, giving me and Peeta a concerned look.

I hesitated, not wanting to let Rosemarie go, but then I saw Paylor and Gale and Effie behind her and knew we had to talk. Greasy Sae took the kids past the vans and street, probably having them sit in the grass near the woods, far away from the commotion near us.

"We need to discuss what went on tonight," Paylor said, looking at me and Peeta seriously.

"What's there to discuss?" I asked her, raising my eyebrows. "Gale asked you to be here and get rid of Caesar and his people before this happened, but you wouldn't send anyone to help us."

"Katniss," Paylor said, irritated. "Do you realize how many people have died keeping you alive?"

"Yes," I said, nodding my head. "But I didn't ask for any of it. I woke up one day the face of a rebellion, and then to the news that people were stalking my family _fifteen _years after that same rebellion."

Paylor looked at me and I could tell she felt defeated, because she didn't have a good response to my reply. Effie crossed her arms over her chest while Gale shifted his weight from one foot to the other as he watched us.

"Let's try not to kill anyone anymore," Paylor said, annoyed. "Can you at least agree to that?"

"Yes," Peeta said, nodding at her.

She backed away from us and turned to her crew, leaving us be.

"Listen, Effie, we need to thank you for what you did," Peeta said.

"We Hunger Games survivors have to stick together," Effie said, smiling over at him.

I didn't mention that she herself didn't survive much of anything since she was the one who thought the Hunger Games were a big, big, big deal when they were going on, but she helped us more than I ever thought was possible, so I couldn't blame her.

"Haymitch, you knew everything, didn't you?" I asked him.

"Just a few things," he said with a shrug. "Effie wouldn't shut up about it."

Effie gasped quietly at him, still thinking he was as rude as ever after all these years. She shook her head, mumbling more to herself.

"How'd you know we'd be able to handle it?" Peeta asked him.

He pressed his hand against the cut on his head, and I realized that we both needed medical attention. I looked over at Gale, who was thinking the same thing, and he left to find someone to help.

"Those people, they only knew how to watch people die. Not kill them or protect themselves," Haymitch replied.

"The odds were always in our favor," Effie said.

Peeta and I grinned, because even though the phrase was such a reminder of the Hunger Games, we realized that it was so relevant to the Games, this night, and to life in general. If the odds weren't in our favor, we would have never made it this far.

"How'd the fire start?" I asked Haymitch. "Did they torch the place thinking you were inside?"

Haymitch shook his head, glancing at our houses that were now just ashes.

"Do you know how fast alcohol burns?" Haymitch asked.

"No, how fast?" Peeta asked, glancing at me.

"Fast," Haymitch replied, keeping his eyes on the flickering piles of ash. "Really fast. Just blows right up."

He seemed satisfied, like alcohol had been his weapon of choice all along, and maybe it had and that was the reason for his constant supply. Before any of us could say anything, Gale was back with a medical team, who rushed me and Peeta away from Haymitch and Effie. We sat near the vans for awhile while they cleaned us up and examined our injuries.

From my spot, I could see Haymitch and Effie standing next to each other talking. They were looking out at the houses, and Effie linked her arm with Haymitch's. She leaned her head against his arm, and even though I could tell he was telling her that she was a crazy lady, he let her stay right there.

An hour later, we were done being patched up and Peeta and I were back with the kids. We were sitting on the grass while we watched the vans and cars being packed up while some of Paylor's people walked around making sure everything around the fire was secure. Gale was standing with Paylor as they monitored the progress, and I couldn't help but wonder if Gale would one day take over her job.

"I'll be right back," I told Peeta, whispering so that I wouldn't wake up the kids, who were sleeping between me and him.

"Where are you going?" he asked.

"I just need to check on something."

He nodded and let me go even though he was skeptical, and I walked past the row of vans and cars. No one stopped me when I got closer to where our house once stood. I glanced behind me and saw Gale watching. He started making his way over to me, slowing when he was in the front yard. He glanced behind him, maybe to make sure no one saw that he was letting me get a closer look, and nodded at me to hurry.

I walked over to where my front porch once was, and the only thing that remained was the blackened front steps. Caesar was just a few feet past the steps, but in the ashes of my house, I could see two more bodies. The white Peacekeeper uniforms told me that those were the last remaining enemies.

I took a long look at Caesar, whose hair was burnt as his head lay in a pile of ashes, once I got to him. The arrow that killed him stayed stuck up in his chest. He didn't look like the man Peeta and I knew when he was interviewing us for the Games. There was a look of craziness to him now, and I guess he had to be to start a fight he knew he couldn't win. Although, when I saw the rose on his chest, bubbling and oozing out purple, I realized that his fight was still going, and that his plan was not yet finished.

"Get back!" I screamed, seeing the look of alarm on Gale's face.

Of course, this fight couldn't just be over once Caesar Flickerman was dead and once we were finally home. Of course, there had to be something added to make it interesting. And just as I was running away from the house, I felt the heat of fire on the back of my arms and saw in front of me the look of disbelief from everyone too far away to help.

The last thing I saw as my head collided with the ground and before everything went black was a golden dandelion, squashed into the grass from someone stepping on it.

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	12. Chapter 12

**Hey, everyone! Here is the first chapter of Part Three: The Lucky One! I'm hoping to get at least five reviews before updating the next chapter, so be sure to comment for a quick update! Enjoy!**

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Rekindling

Part Three (The Lucky One)

Chapter Twelve

My vision was blurred when I woke up in a bed that wasn't mine. I was in a house, though, because there weren't hospital noises or machines set up around me. My eyes were dry and I felt sandy pieces of goop in the corner of my eyes as I blinked. I was cocooned under a white blanket as if someone had gone around my body and tucked the blanket under me along every inch. As I kept blinking, my vision slowly got better, and I finally saw two feet propped up on the edge of the bed. I followed the legs of the person they belonged to and saw Peeta sitting in a chair.

When he saw that I was awake he seemed surprised, but then he seemed relieved as he scooted the chair closer to the edge of the bed, taking his feet off of the mattress. My hair was sprawled over my pillow and I could see the waves in it when he carefully brushed a hand over some of my hair on the pillow.

"You're up," he said, smiling over at me.

He rested his hand on mine and I held it because just as he spoke a shooting pain danced across my forehead. He obviously sensed that something was going on with me, because he grabbed my arm and looked at me seriously, as if helping me brace the pain.

"Does your head hurt?" he asked me, lowering his voice probably because he thought his first two words were too loud.

"Yeah," I whispered, feeling how dry my mouth was when my answer came out in a croak.

"Drink some water," Peeta said, grabbing a cup from the nightstand next to me.

It had a bendy straw in it, so he just held it to my mouth so that all I had to do was sip. Peeta seemed mysterious to me all of a sudden. I felt like I was still half asleep and wasn't sure if I was actually up yet. He set the water back on the table and leaned his elbows against the mattress, peering over at me.

"You were sleeping for a few days," Peeta told me. "You hit your head pretty hard."

"Something exploded," I told him.

He smiled softly and nodded.

"Yeah, something exploded."

"What exploded?" I asked him.

"The rose on Caesar Flickerman's jacket was explosive. Once the pollen in it got to a certain temperature, it caught fire."

I remembered the rose, the purple substance dripping from it, but the person Peeta mention rung no bells. I tried to think of who he was talking about, because he said the name as if he expected me to know the man, but I remembered nothing related to the name.

"Caesar Flickerman?" I repeated, shaking my head because I didn't know who he was talking about.

Peeta's left eyebrow flickered the slightest, like he was thinking something, but didn't want to reveal what he was thinking to me. I stared at him while he ran his index finger over the top of my hand.

"Just out of curiosity," Peeta started, smiling at me like an adult smiling at a child. "What were we doing last night?"

I thought of the last couple of days and thought of Rye and Rosemarie being in danger. There had been people coming after them, so Peeta and I did what any parents would do and went after them before they could get to our family.

"We went after people who were going to hurt us and the kids… Rye and Rosemarie," I said.

"That's right," Peeta said, relieved again.

"You seem relieved that I knew that."

"It's hard to tell what your head injury could have done."

"You mean like made me crazy?" I asked him, joking a little bit to lighten the mood.

He smiled and laughed with me. The motion of his finger on my skin made me shiver, which he noticed, so stopped. I grabbed his hand in mine and squeezed it as I took him in. He had a bandage taped to the side of his head, running from his temple to his ear, and another bandage circled his upper arm.

"Are you okay?" I asked him.

"I'm fine," he said. "I'll heal."

"Where are the kids?"

I looked across the room at the door that was opened halfway to see if I could get a glimpse of them, but only heard Rosemarie's laughter. The morning sun coming in from other windows of the house outside of the room streamed in from the door, brightening up the room since all of the blinds were shut on the windows around me.

"They're just hanging out with Gale," Peeta said.

I nodded, hearing the pattering footsteps of their bare feet on the floors. Peeta could tell I was hoping to see them, so he stood up and opened the door further. He disappeared for a few seconds and came back with Rye.

"Hi, Rye," I said with a smile, reaching for him when Peeta was closer.

Peeta set Rye on the bed next to me and Rye instantly grabbed the blanket over me, breaking me away from the tight confines of the blanket when he tugged at it. I smiled at him because I didn't feel as trapped anymore. I wiggled his hands in the air, laughing when he did.

Rosemarie ran into the room a few minutes later and bounded onto the bed. I flinched because she knocked my leg, and Peeta made a face that meant he saw what she did. He scooped her up and set her down closer to my head so that she didn't have to climb over me, like I knew she would.

"Hi, Mama," she said, pressing her hand against my forehead.

Peeta smirked as he sat in the chair.

"Does your head feel better?" Rosemarie asked me.

"Much better," I said, lying just a little bit.

"Can you braid my hair?" Rosemarie asked. Her hair was tangled and falling in her face. "Daddy can't do it."

"Maybe a little bit later," I said with a laugh as Peeta shrugged. He must have been on hair duty when I was sleeping.

"Alright, guys, I think Mom needs to rest," Peeta said, lifting Rosemarie from the bed and setting her down next to him.

He picked Rye up from the bed too after I fixed a fly away hair on his head and made his way to the door. They had only been in the room for less than a minute and I was already exhausted, which just told me I was a long way from being better.

"Is Uncle Gale going to have to go home now that Mom is up?" Rosemarie asked Peeta as she grabbed his hand.

"We'll see," Peeta said to her, leaving me alone in the room.

My eyes were growing heavy now that I was alone and had nothing to look at but the dim room. I could barely keep my head from falling sideways onto the comfortable pillow, but wanted to stay awake since I had been sleeping for so long. When Peeta came back, creating noise as he and Gale walked into the room, I jumped.

"Hey, Catnip," Gale said, walking over to me and pressing a kiss on the top of my head.

He smelt like grass and firewood, which was what I smelt as his scent lingered around me once he pulled away from me. He looked so tall as he stood next to the bed, peering down at me.

"Catnip?" I repeated, laughing at the name.

Gale's face twinged in the way Peeta's had when I asked about Caesar Flickerman. He glanced not so subtly at Peeta when I looked up at him while wondering where the name came from.

"That's my nickname for you," Gale said, smiling down at me.

"Oh," I said, not recalling that at all. "Okay."

Peeta sat back down in the chair he had been in when I woke up and Gale sat down on the edge of my bed. He almost sat on my leg with the cut, but I didn't mention that because I didn't want him to leave. I knew I'd fall asleep if either of them did.

"So, Katniss, how's your head?" Gale asked me.

"It hurts," I told him. There really wasn't much more to say.

"I have a question for you," Gale said, studying my face.

"Uh-oh," I said with a grin.

He looked over at Peeta for a second and when he nodded as if giving the go ahead, Gale asked me his question.

"Who am I?" Gale asked. "Like, to you I mean."

I looked at Peeta, but he wasn't helping me out. Gale was familiar to me, I even felt comfortable around him, so I don't know why he needed to know who he was to me… I thought he should know. He wasn't the one, after all, who had the head injury.

"You're Rye and Rosemarie's uncle," I told him.

"I know that, but who am I to you?"

I creased my forehead in confusion, not sure what the difference was, or why I was suddenly being quizzed.

"You're their Uncle Gale…so you're one of our brothers," I said, coming up with the logical explanation.

I remembered him at holiday dinners and being in family memories, so obviously he was around a lot, and by the sound of it, Rosemarie was extremely fond of him.

"I guess we're finally related," Gale said with a chuckle.

The look on his face was one of amusement and he looked to be having a hard time not laughing at me. I was very aware now, as he searched my face for something more, that he knew more than I apparently did.

"What does he mean by finally?" I asked Peeta.

"Nothing," Peeta said, shaking his head. "I think you just need some rest."

"No… Peeta, really, I've been sleeping for days," I said, shaking my head because I didn't want to go to sleep and miss out on even more.

"Don't worry, Katniss," Peeta said, standing when Gale stood also. "We'll be here when you get up."

"Peeta—"

They left me alone in the room, almost rushing out, and I did everything I could to stay awake so that maybe I'd catch a part of their conversation. But after everything that happened to me the night Peeta and I went hunting for those people in the woods, my body still needed to catch up, and I fell asleep even before I could at least ask for another drink.

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	13. Chapter 13

**Hey, everyone! Thank the five who reviewed to get this chapter updated! I'll update again if I get EIGHT reviews, so be sure to comment if you want to see what happens next. Enjoy!**

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Rekindling

Chapter Thirteen

I woke up later that day and was cocooned back under my blanket with the shades pulled down and the door to my room half shut. I was tired of lying in bed even though I had been sleeping unaware of my surroundings for most of the time I was in it. My head spun when I sat up so that I could lean against the headboard, and I had to steady myself by gripping the blanket covering me. After blinking a few more times, the black spots that I saw dotting my vision disappeared.

Peeta walked in a few minutes later with a tray of food. He smiled when he saw that I was up and came over to the side of the bed.

"I was coming to wake you up to eat something," he explained, setting the tray in front of me.

There was a bowl of soup and a roll set on the tray with a napkin and spoon. The second the hot steam of the soup touched my face, my stomach growled.

"This is probably all you'll be able to eat right now," Peeta said when I looked at it as if wondering where the rest was.

He sat in the chair next to my bed and watched me eat. I kept looking over at him in between bites, hoping he'd get the hint that I didn't need an audience. He didn't.

"Are the kids up still?" I asked him when my bowl was empty.

"They just went to bed."

"I miss them," I said, letting him take the tray away from me and set it on the dresser across the room.

"I know," Peeta said. "Once you get back on your normal schedule, you'll be able to be up with them."

"Have they asked about what happened last night with the house?" I asked him.

"Rosemarie wondered when she'd be able to get her toys back," Peeta mentioned. "She's been pretty entertained with Gale around, so I don't think she's too upset that they're gone."

"Did we lose everything?"

"Haymitch grabbed a few things before he took the kids out of the house."

"What'd he take?"

"What he thought we'd miss," Peeta said. "The family book, your old bow and arrows, some pictures."

"That was nice of him."

There was a knock on the door and Haymitch walked in, who looked as though he had just woken up from a nap. He smiled at me when our eyes met and Peeta moved from the chair so that he could take a seat.

"How's life, sweetheart?" Haymitch asked me, leaning forward in the chair, but not touching me like everyone else seemed to do the second they saw me.

"Right now just a blur," I said.

"Good," Haymitch said with a nod. "That's good."

"It is?" I asked him.

"Most of my life has been a blur," Haymitch told me. "You'll get used to it."

Peeta visibly rolled his eyes from behind Haymitch. He rubbed his forehead while he bit back a comment.

"I heard you think Gale's your brother," Haymitch said, which resulted in Peeta swatting him in the back of his head.

"Haymitch, really?" Peeta said, sighing loudly.

"Why does everyone think that's so funny?" I asked Haymitch as he swung behind the chair at Peeta, having no chance of hitting him back.

"Just ironic, is all."

I sighed because I didn't know what more to say about the topic. Maybe if someone would just tell me the right title for Gale, I wouldn't keep embarrassing myself. Haymitch licked his lips after settling back down and I watched as he blew out of them, starting to whistle. I didn't know why all of a sudden he decided to start whistling a tune, and Peeta seemed to be thinking the same.

"You recognize that song?" Haymitch asked me when he stopped his rhythmic whistling.

I could tell by how my face scrunched together that I was looking at him like he was completely insane.

"Should I?"

Haymitch and Peeta looked at each other, which told me that I should. I looked from Haymitch to Peeta and then back at Haymitch, who clapped his hands together just once before standing up.

"I'll see you later," Haymitch said, his visit not lasting long. "Hopefully this hangover lasts long for your sake."

"I'm not hung over," I replied.

"Even better," Haymitch said.

He patted Peeta on the arm and I could tell that they both knew what each other was thinking. I felt a sudden burst of panic rush through me because Haymitch wasn't the first to look at Peeta as if he had a long road ahead of him. I had the urge to jump out of bed and walk around so that I could start living my life again, and so I could hear what everyone talked about when they disappeared out of my room.

"Everyone keeps looking disappointed at my answers, Peeta," I said once Haymitch was gone. "What's going on?"

"I don't know yet," Peeta said. "I called Dr. Aurelius to come and check on you tomorrow morning."

"What do you think is going on?" I asked him.

He brushed his hand over my arm a few times and I noticed that the bandage on his head was smaller than it had been this morning.

"I think you've just forgotten a few things," Peeta said. "No big deal."

"Will you tell everyone to stop looking at me the way they are?" I asked him.

"How are they looking at you?"

"The way you're looking at me right now."

He seemed surprised at my response and stopped the back and forth motion of his hand on my arm. His eyes softened from their pity look he had been sending me, and he leaned over and kissed me at the corner of my eye, right below the cut on my head.

"I'll tell them."

* * *

Before Dr. Aurelius arrived the next morning to check on me, I had enough time to see the kids, who both sat on my bed in front of me as I sat with my feet crossed underneath me. Rosemarie insisted that I braid her hair since it had been a long time since I had, and she handed me over a brush that she brought in with her. I brushed her hair out and then handed it over to Rye, who stuck it in his mouth after a few babbles.

I was twisting the hair tie around the thin end of the braid when Gale walked in. He was carrying a soccer ball and hula-hoop, which banged against the door when he came into the room. He made a face, but turned to the kids.

"Who wants to go outside?" he asked them, exciting them just by the enthusiasm in his voice.

"I do!" Rosemarie exclaimed, raising her hand.

"Come on then," Gale said, waving her over so that she'd come with him.

He scooped Rye up from the bed and exchanged the hairbrush for the soccer ball.

"Dr. Aurelius is here," Gale whispered from the doorway, giving me a warning.

I found myself fixing my hair and making sure that my shirt wasn't overly wrinkled. I don't know what I thought I would accomplish by looking neat, but deep down I hoped he would see me and instantly tell me I wasn't going crazy. Peeta and Dr. Aurelius walked in after Gale left the doorway. Dr. Aurelius smiled at me as he adjusted his glasses and he was carrying a simple pad of paper and a pen.

"It's nice to see you, Katniss," he said.

"You too."

"Now, let's not lie. This visit is all about honesty."

I tried to hold in my laugh, but couldn't as he sat down in the chair by my bed. I was glad he knew I wasn't exactly thrilled with the idea of being analyzed. At the same time, I wondered how he knew I wouldn't like to talk.

"We're just going to talk a little bit today," he told me. "I just want to see what you remember and what you don't."

I nodded, wanting him to start now so that it would be over sooner.

"I think it would be best if you weren't here, Peeta," Dr. Aurelius said, looking away from me. "That way you can't give her hints."

Peeta hesitated, but left the room after telling the both of us he'd be close if we needed anything.

"Ready?" Dr. Aurelius asked.

"Sure."

He asked me a series of questions, ones he told me I should know from various times in my life. He asked me about marrying Peeta, which I could talk about and asked me about when Peeta and I met, which I couldn't. He asked me about Rosemarie and Rye's childhood, which I remembered clearly, but when he asked about mine, I couldn't think of a single thing. When he asked me about a game, I asked him which one he meant, but he said I would know and that it wasn't a fun one anyway. Panic set in a few times, when I so badly wanted to have an answer to his questions, and I found myself squeezing my eyes so tight to try to remember something, anything, about when I was younger.

Dr. Aurelius patted my hand when my eyes filled with tears after asking me to respond to the list of names he had. He wanted me to say the first thing that I remembered about them, but I was afraid I wouldn't know anyone.

"Greasy Sae," he said.

"She watches the kids sometimes and makes really good stews."

"Peeta."

I rolled my eyes at him and he grinned as if trying to raise my spirits with an easy one.

"He's my husband."

"Gale."

"He's my kids' uncle, but apparently he really isn't because he can't stop laughing at the idea," I said in frustration, but my exasperation didn't throw him off or prevent him from going on.

"Effie."

"She told Gale about the people who were watching us."

"President Snow."

I shook my head at him, wondering why he looked up from his glasses the way he did. He seemed to be holding his breath, like this name would be the start of a long list that I wouldn't know.

"Rue."

I blinked in response, not feeling like I needed to explain to him that I didn't know.

"Finnich."

I sighed, scratching my arm as I stared back at him.

"Prim."

"I don't know," I said with a shake of my head.

He nodded and set his pen between the pages of his notepad and stopped rattling off names.

"What do you have to say?" I asked him.

"I'm going to get Peeta to have him hear this as well."

Dr. Aurelius poked his head out of the room and Peeta appeared instantly. He had to have been waiting by the door while we talked. He sat down on the end of the bed by my feet as Dr. Aurelius sat back down in the chair.

"Well, Katniss," Dr. Aurelius started. "It seems to me that you don't remember anything before you married Peeta."

"Nothing?" Peeta asked him, surprised.

"I'm afraid not."

Peeta didn't seem to be as concerned about the diagnosis as Dr. Aurelius. He acted like he had just been told I would live a hundred more years.

"When you say nothing…" Peeta started.

"I mean, nothing," Dr. Aurelius said, giving Peeta a look that he seemed to understand.

They were talking as if I weren't lying in the bed they were surrounding, which made me angry. I didn't understand the looks they were exchanging and knew that there was so much more going on.

"Will I ever get my memory back?" I asked him.

"Only time will tell," Dr. Aurelius said. "But I wouldn't worry. You two will just have to make your life so great from now on, that you won't ever have to think about how you've forgotten a few things. You'll just be living in your life today, not in your life from the past."

"That's a good idea," Peeta said after sending me a reassuring look.

"You're one of the lucky ones who get to have a clean slate," Dr. Aurelius said. "I have patients who can only wish they forgot what you have."

Peeta shifted in his spot after Dr. Aurelius's last comment. His comment was just another one I didn't understand. I couldn't believe that people wished to forget everything that made them who they were. Peeta led Dr. Aurelius out of the room and left me be for a while, even when I knew Dr. Aurelius was gone. He came back later, though, right when I was about to start having a panic attack. It was like my brain could tell me nothing I wondered about. I had no answers to simple questions like if I had siblings, or what my favorite memories were from when I was a kid.

"You look too happy," I told Peeta when he sat down next to me.

He leaned against the headboard that I was leaning against and reached over to take my hand. He had a look in his eyes that told me he was shocked, yet okay with the news we just got from Dr. Aurelius.

"Sorry," Peeta said.

"Are you going to fill me in?"

"On what?"

"On my past," I said, looking at him. "You're my husband, Peeta, so you know who I am… who I was."

"Your maiden name is Everdeen," Peeta told me.

I waited for him to go on, but he didn't. He remained quiet as if that was all I really needed to know.

"And?"

"And you're named after a root."

"A root?"

"A root."

Peeta seemed to think that the explanation of my name was all that I needed to hold me over for the day. I knew there were a million details to figure out about my past, so this one, which took him forever just to say, wasn't enough.

"Were we friends when we were kids?"

"We were paired up a lot," Peeta said. "So kind of."

"What do you mean by kind of?"

"Well, I _kind of_ skipped the friend part and just went straight to loving you."

"If you're trying to flatter your way out of telling me, it won't work."

"I'm not," Peeta said with a laugh. "Honestly, that's the truth."

"What are you hesitant about telling me?" I asked him.

"Nothing, Katniss," Peeta said, sounding honest, so I guessed he wasn't being hesitant and just planned on never telling me at all. "All you really need to know is that I love you now like I did in the past, and you love me… you do remember that you love me, right?"

I looked over at him, thinking for a second I'd freak him out by telling him I didn't remember loving him, but the look on his face stopped me. He looked genuinely concerned that I had.

"I love you," I told him. "But that may only be temporary if you don't tell me what I've forgotten."

"Well, I'll enjoy it while it lasts," Peeta said, smiling at me.

He knew I wasn't joking around, but he was happy anyway. It was clear that he had no intentions of telling me what I wanted to know. Since today had already been too much to handle, I didn't ask anymore questions. It would take me a while longer to accept the fact that my past was nonexistent to me now, but I wouldn't give up trying to figure it out. Even if that meant going behind Peeta's back in order to find out.

* * *

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